Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Father (1989)

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clip ‘The embodiment of evil’

Original classification rating: M. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Joseph Mueller (Max von Sydow) and his daughter, Anne Winton (Carol Drinkwater), watch a current affairs television programme. During an interview with reporter Paul Jamieson (Nicholas Bell), Holocaust survivor Iya Zetnick (Julia Blake) claims Joseph is in fact Franz Kessler, the Nazi who killed her family in Lithuania in the Second World War.

Curator’s notes

This sequence powerfully demonstrates how lives can change forever in a brief moment. Nothing will ever be the same in the Winton household following Iya’s sensational claims on a national TV programme. The impact is heightened by Iya relating the story of her family’s brutal murders while Anna is sitting in the same room as her father, now the accused.