To avoid a prison sentence, the Frenchman Abel joins the front. Shortly afterwards he ends up being taken captive by the Germans in East Prussia. There the simple-minded young man has to look after the Nazis’ elite offspring. Abel realises too late that the children are to be used as cannon fodder.

Volker Schlöndorff, the director of the Palme d’Or winner The Tin Drum, returns to World War II for this grandiose, epic-scale drama about a continent torn apart by conflict. Starring the inimitable John Malkovich, The Ogre paints a powerful allegory of Nazism and the battle between good and evil.