Der Tiger (2025)

The film is set on the Eastern Front in the autumn of 1943, during World War II. The Wehrmacht has been retreating for months following its defeat at Stalingrad. The story begins with the defense of a bridge over the Dnieper, across which German soldiers retreat with support from the titular Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger. Once all the soldiers have crossed the bridge, the tank also pulls back in the final minutes before the bridge is scheduled to be blown up at midnight. However, the Tiger crew, led by commander Philip Gerkens, is caught in a firestorm caused by incendiary bombs dropped by attacking Ilyushin ground-attack aircraft, and apparently only narrowly escapes the inevitable destruction of the bridge. Some time later, the five-man crew receives a special assignment: without further support, they are to advance behind enemy lines in their hastily repaired tank, find Colonel Paul von Hardenburg, a comrade of Gerkens’s from officer training school, and prevent him from being captured and interrogated by the Red Army. After successfully crossing a minefield, the crew encounters several Soviet SU-100 tank destroyers. Commander Gerkens decides not to engage them and orders the crew to escape by driving underwater through a nearby river. After getting away, they reach a village to replenish their supplies and fuel. There, they witness the Waffen-SS herd civilians into a village church and set it on fire. Shortly before they reach Paul von Hardenburg’s location, they engage an SU-100. The Tiger destroys the enemy tank, but the radio operator, Keilig, is killed. The loader, Michel, notices that the destroyed enemy tank contains no bodies, only charred skeletons. The surviving crew finds the colonel they were sent to locate in a bunker. Paul von Hardenburg tells Gerkens about their shared experiences at Stalingrad, including the order to set fire to a hall in the tractor factory while civilians and soldiers were still inside, whose screams of death they can now hear. Von Hardenburg confronts his old friend Gerkens over his “blind obedience”—his belief that he must carry out the orders he is given at any cost, no matter how inhuman they may be. He asks what it is all for, and also confirms that Gerkens’s wife and son died in the Hamburg firestorm. It turns out that the entire mission is not really happening: Gerkens has hallucinated it all. He wakes up to find himself in the burning tank on the bridge from the beginning. He finally realizes that the Tiger did not make it through the retreat: the tank and its crew plunge into the river as the bridge is destroyed by explosions.