film synopsis
“Hitler is dead, but we’re still alive,” Holocaust survivor, and revered jokester, David Bermann (Moritz Bleibtreu, Run Lola Run) emphasizes to his newly assembled rag tag group of businessmen in the wonderful war dramedy Bye Bye Germany. Inspired largely by screenwriter Michel Bergmann’s own family history, the end of WWII finds mustachioed entrepreneur Bermann enlisting fellow survivors to shrewdly sell overpriced “luxury” linens to guilt-ridden Germans. For Bermann, business partner Holzmann (Mark Ivanir), and the rest of the motley crew, the goal is to raise enough money to travel to America, land of the free. Easier said than done when even an old standard on the radio triggers memories of the unequivocal horrors of the concentration camps. Yet when Bermann is mysteriously summoned by the occupying American forces and interrogated about his own past by sharp special agent Sara Simon (Antje Traue, Woman in Gold), the humor that got him through the war may prove to be his demise.