Der Passfälscher (2022)

Berlin, 1942. Ever since his parents were deported to the East, Cioma Schönhaus has lived alone in the spacious apartment, until the day he takes in his friend Det. The young tailor is popular with women, and thanks to his charm and good connections with market women, he can get Cioma and himself many things money cannot buy. Cioma is Jewish, but he refuses to be intimidated by the National Socialists or to let them take away his joy in life. So he and Det regularly mingle with the crowds, since Cioma sees public places as a good hiding place. Using the identities of naval officers they have created for themselves, they throw themselves into the city’s nightlife with made-up names and stories about the war. That evening, Cioma meets Gerda, and the two become a couple. Before the war, Cioma attended a graphic arts school, and he now works in an arms factory, which exempts him from military service at the front. One day, lawyer Kaufmann commissions him to forge identity papers for people who want to flee Germany. The devout man does this out of Christian charity and asks Cioma always to carry a tie, so he can hang himself with it if the Gestapo ever turns up at his home. Kaufmann collects original papers in the offering boxes of his congregation’s church; sympathetic Christians put them there. In return for his work, Cioma receives food-ration cards and sets to work with enthusiasm. By day, with just one brush, some ink, and his steady hand, he forges identity papers, thereby saving many lives. One day, criminal investigator Heiner seals up his parents’ empty rooms to prevent the furniture, which is now state property, from disappearing. Once Heiner has left, Cioma removes the seal and prepares a forged one in case of an inspection. Det invites market women to look around the apartment for things they might want to buy from the two of them. Their sale is interrupted by Frau Peters, the widow of the former block warden from the ground floor, who knows exactly what goes on in every apartment in the building. She proposes that she sell the things for Cioma. Once that is done, the two young men will have to leave the apartment. Cioma cannot refuse her offer. Although everyone tells him to be careful and avoid public places, Cioma usually takes the bus, which Jews are forbidden to do. After Cioma and Kaufmann have not worked together for some time, Cioma has lost his job at the arms factory for repeatedly arriving late, and he is no longer receiving food-ration cards, he devotes himself entirely to forging passports. They set up a print shop in an empty grocery store. There, by day, Cioma forges identity papers alongside Ludwig Lichtwitz, who is 20 years older than him. With the money Frau Peters got for his parents’ furniture, Det and Cioma rent a small apartment. Cioma now calls himself Peter Schönhausen and pretends to the new neighbors that he is a government employee working on a secret project. His audacity repeatedly gets him out of tight spots. But his forgeries and his fearless behavior in public also keep putting him in danger. By now, the authorities know that he has already made more than 300 passports. After Det is exposed and arrested before his eyes in a luxury restaurant, Cioma wants to forge a military identity card for himself, but needs a genuine example and persuades Frau Peters to get him one. While he is working in his old apartment, an official comes looking for him there. An air-raid alarm prevents Cioma from being discovered.