Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.
Persian Lessons earns high marks for its ingeniously conceived plot — a Jewish prisoner inventing a fake language word by word to survive a Nazi officer obsessed with postwar dreams. This premise is genuinely singular and brilliantly sustained, giving the film exceptional Novelty. The plot mechanics are tightly constructed and emotionally devastating, culminating in the film's quietly shattering use of the invented names. Acting is solid — Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and Lars Eidinger deliver committed performances, though neither quite transcends the material into something truly transformative. Cinematography is competent and atmospheric but largely conventional for the wartime drama genre — functional rather than visually distinctive. The ending is emotionally resonant and thematically coherent, but stops short of being truly surprising or formally bold, landing it in above-average territory.