Watch The Flat For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I wanted to like this documentary. After the first ten minutes I was ready to Love it. Something like this can only happen once in a lifetime and Arnon Goldfinger was at the heart of a discovery that would change many a life and alter the perspective of your whole reality.How can a former SS Officer's family and a Jewish family who had to leave Germany maintain a friendship, forgetting all that has gone before and finding solace in the mutual reconciliation of a friendship that could survive even the greatest Horrors of the 20th Century and the modern enlightened era?After a few minutes of this documentary I fell in love with the idea and was hoping that Arnon would call up a real documentary maker like Louis Theroux or anyone non-biased who could provide a well educated, non-egotistical objective view of the whole situation. Instead what we are delivered is one man's ignorant state of being, of not accepting 100 years of history. Blinkered by his own hangups and of a complete refusal to think that anyone could be friends after things that have never even directly affected him in his own life, Arnon goes around with arms folded and Tiger like glare in his eyes trying to force his attitude on everyone he comes across. He talks over people who make excellent points, and tries to hammer a life changing reality on a family that were so much happier before he ever entered their lives. The Von Mildenstein family approached everything from a well educated, very reasonable point of view. They share when needed and allow for new aspects and revelations, but when Arnon turns up in the end and says that "I felt you should know" that he had not backed down, researched Herr Von Mildenstein, and had traveled all the way to bloody Wuppertal to deliver this message was so infuriating that I actually paused the film and walked away for a good ten minutes before finishing the film. Real journalism would have seen many more bases covered. With a view from all sides, maybe even (god forbid) a bit of understanding or sympathy.Real journalism would have opened new doors and at the same time used all previous evidence to help form a balanced view of history, the present and the future.Real journalism is not one man trying to make himself feel better by being the one dog who will not let go of the same old bone. There are plenty more bones to be found.As it is, this documentary reveals nothing, accomplishes nothing, neglects everything and serves as a good waste of digital memory.I am so sad that I just sat through the whole thing and still don't know if Arnon feels better about himself. And I don't care. His parents and his grandparents were able to live happily and clearly were far more open minded to peace and harmony than he will ever be.I just felt like I was watching one man and his mid-life crisis unfolding before my very eyes. You cannot undo history Arnon, you can only make today better.

I had never heard of this film as we don't get many documentaries in our area and if it was shown at a Jewish film festival, it would have eluded me. Although this is a documentary focused on the holocaust, primarily whet I took away; is that there are people who want to be realists and deal with the truths of their own and the lives of others and there are those who live lives of denial. It is my opinion that the second type of people actually endanger not only themselves but those they may love very much.I knew people who themselves had been in camps or were the children of those who had been, but I had never stopped to consider the "lapping" over of lives of those who had been persecutors and persecuted. And of course there must be many such instances of this.Many people on the message boards have criticized Aron Goldfinger for confronting the daughter, Edda, of the Von Mildensteins. But why should he not have done so? She said her father was traveling in Japan during the war, but did his grandparents receive any letters from his travels then? I was sort of disgusted with both husband and wife in that situation. that the camps had been Russian and American propaganda, I am roughly the same age as Hannah and Edda and believe me I would have known if all the Jewish children in my school had disappeared. What do they think happened to those people. Where are all the other Arons that should have populated Germany? They never got born because there parents died in the camps.Through one of those odd twists of fate I became involved in a correspondence with a woman whose parents had been very prominent in Hitlar's Nazi Germany. When it was found that one of the couple were not completely Aryan they had to leave Germany and settled with their large family in the town I now live in. When I first heard from one of these children I did research in the newspaper archives here, and like Edda my correspondent was very desirous of explaining away her parents involvement in events that took place in Germany.We here in the United States are supposed to continue to feel guilty about the fact that this country once allowed slavery. No one alive today owned a slave here, and many are descended from people who did not even live in America during slave owning years. But there are many in Germany who lived though those years of 1930 and 1940 and who claim to have no knowledge of anything unpleasant that happened, except to themselves. As we learn Edda and her husband had spent many years living in England.My husband and I are both very pleased that we saw this wonderful documentary and we both liked Aron very much.

I found this documentary, written, directed, and narrated by Arnon Goldfinger, to be quite fascinating as it unravels like a detective story.When Arnon's grandmother Gerda Tuchler passes away in Tel Aviv, at the age of 98, Arnon and other family members, including his mother Hannah, converge on Gerda's apartment to help sort out its' contents. However when Arnon comes across an article from the 1930's, in the German newspaper Der Angriff ( a notorious Nazi propaganda publication), it opens up a Pandora's Box of questions and eventual investigations.Gerda and her husband Kurt Tuchler were living in Germany at the time, but they are shown in this article visiting Palestine with a known SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and his wife. Further investigation by Arnon revealed letters and photos of a friendship between the Tuchlers and von Mildensteins which continued, after the Tuchler's migration to Palestine, during WW2 itself, and amazingly even after the war.One of the fascinating aspects of the film is that every time Arnon tried to find an answer to the past, new and vital avenues of inquiry would arise. It would take way too much space to document all that Arnon uncovered in the movie. However, I will say there were many surprises along the way which kept me quite riveted.Was von Mildenstein actually working with the notorious Nazis Eichmann and Goebbels, or had he left Germany on a world tour as his daughter Edda believed? Even after the war, did von Mildenstein work as a Coca-Cola executive despite the fact that his name was prominently mentioned by Eichmann at his trial? Was Arnon's great grandmother Susanne Lehmann sent to a concentration camp and murdered by the Nazis? If so, why wasn't he or any member of his family told about it?Crucial questions like these are attempted to be answered by Arnon, and as mentioned it all adds up to a riveting story where one layer after another is peeled off. I thought Goldfinger did an outstanding job, in his low key manner, of putting the pieces of this puzzle together in this exceptional movie.

Imagine that your grandmother has just passed away and your family is cleaning out her apartment. Amidst all the stuff your grandmother has collected, you find a tantalizing and shocking newspaper article involving your grandparents that you never heard about before from any other family member including your mother. This is essentially the set-up for 'The Flat', a fascinating new documentary by Israeli filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger.Goldfinger's grandparents, Gerda and Kurt Tuchler, were German Jews who emigrated to Palestine (now Israel) in 1936 after the Nazis forced them out. The article was from a virulent Nazi newspaper, Der Angriff, from 1934, which chronicles a trip made by a high Nazi official, Leopold von Mildenstein, to Palestine. The article features photos of Mildenstein traveling to Palestine with Goldfinger's grandparents.The mystery is not only why this SS man would go to Palestine with two Jews but why Goldfinger's grandparents would accompany him. Furthermore, Goldfinger discovers that his grandparents visited Mildenstein in Germany AFTER World War II numerous times and kept up a friendship with him and his wife.The documentary brings out the fact that in 1934 the Nazi policy of 'The Final Solution' (i.e. the extermination of the Jewish people) had not been developed and there was some consideration of deporting German Jews to Palestine. Mildenstein apparently was on a scouting mission to see if deportation was a feasible solution to the "Jewish Question". Mildenstein actually headed the SS Office of Jewish Affairs prior to it being taken over by the infamous Adolph Eichmann. Clips from Eichmann's 1961 trial in Israel are shown along with transcripts from the trial indicating that Eichmann considered Mildenstein as an "expert" on Jewish affairs and that he was basically his mentor! Nonetheless, Mildenstein, apparently was not a racialist and privately had no problems socializing with Jewish people. The Tuchlers may not have been aware of Mildenstein's Nazi affiliations and were simply glad a non-Jewish German would strike up a friendship with them.After Mildenstein's replacement at the Office of Jewish Affairs in 1937, his movements in Germany up until the end of the war were largely unknown. Goldfinger flies to Germany and meets up with Mildenstein's daughter, Edda, who firmly believed that her father was no longer affiliated with the Nazis during the war. Goldfinger seeks out a retired journalist who wrote about Mildenstein during the 1960s when he had become an executive for Coca-Cola. Although the former SS officer was mentioned during the Eichmann trial, his reputation wasn't tarnished as it was believed (as the retired reporter pointed out), that his affiliation with the Nazis had ended in 1937, when he was replaced by Eichmann. During the war (as Mildenstein's daughter's husband indicates) Mildenstein was believed to be a mere 'journalist'.The plot thickens when Goldfinger finds Mildenstein's wartime file in records located in the former East Germany, which were not available to journalists back in the 60s. Goldfinger discovers that Mildenstein was actually promoted as an official in Goebbal's propaganda ministry and worked there for the rest of the war. Goldfinger confronts Mildenstein's daughter with the new information about her father and she appears reluctant to believe what Goldfinger is telling her. Even after she shows her a copy of her father's resume indicating his Nazi affiliations during the war, it is obvious that she's now quite uncomfortable dealing with these new revelations.As for Goldfinger's grandparents, he interviews an expert on German Jewish history who points out that the Tuchlers obviously were not aware of Mildenstein's Nazi wartime activities. They were also willing to forgive him for any past Nazi associations, due to their past friendship with him. Despite being Jewish, the Tuchlers never learned Hebrew while in Israel and continued to speak German. They continued to identify with German culture in spite of the Holocaust and that's why they visited Germany many times after the war.For the most part, 'The Flat' is riveting--only the ending proves to be slightly awkward. As Goldfinger and his mother walk through an old German Jewish cemetery in Germany, they search for the grave of his great-grandfather. Goldfinger unnecessarily berates his mother for not taking more of an interest in her parents when they were alive in order to find out more about their history. Apparently, his grandparents were as complicit as the mother in not revealing information about their time living in Germany and their association with Mildenstein. The mother concedes she should have taken more of an interest in the family history but when she was younger, we have to believe her that she simply had no interest at that time.'The Flat' brings to the fore more revelations regarding issues of guilt and responsibility of ordinary Germans vis-à-vis the Holocaust. By the same token, it chronicles conflicting feelings on the part of those German Jews who survived. 'The Flat' plays out like a detective mystery, with its talented creator cast in the role of high stakes super sleuth!