25 February 2008
An Austrian Holocaust-era drama, ‘The Counterfeiters’ has won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie about a group of Jews who produce counterfeit currency for the Nazis in a concentration camp in order to undermine the US and British economies, beat films from Israel, Kazakhstan, Poland and Russia.
Accepting the Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday, director Stefan Ruzowitzky said "There have been some great Austrian filmmakers working here. Most of them had to leave my country because of the Nazis, so it sort of makes sense that the first Austrian film to win an Oscar was about the Nazis' crimes".