Radical Evil

Winner of the Jerusalem Film Festival Jewish Experience Award

What mechanisms are set in motion that make a highly civilized culture drift into barbarism? What lies behind the thought process of educated family members who murder women, children, and babies? The perpetrators in question are members of the Nazi death squads – the Einsatzgruppen - who shot about two million Jewish civilians in Eastern Europe during WWII. How can a society overcome its readiness for conformity, obedience, and violence?

In Radical Evil, Oscar-winning director Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters, 2007), searches for the reasoning behind these actions and takes us on a psychological and intellectual journey into the root of evil. Through an innovative stylistic approach, perfectly cast actors who play out the events through precise dramatization and historical reconstruction, interviews with renowned researchers, and the surprising results of psychological experiments, Radical Evil leads us to a blueprint for genocide.

“As a storyteller who constantly uses applied psychology, I thought it was a fascinating attempt to find out why completely normal people commit such horrendous crimes” (Stefan Ruzowitzky)