On 20 January 1942, high-ranking representatives of the Nazi regime gathered at a villa on Lake Wannsee in Berlin for a meeting that would become known in history as the Wannsee Conference. During this meeting, the administrative and organisational details for implementing the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” – the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews – were discussed and coordinated.

The 2022 film The Conference (Die Wannseekonferenz) depicts the course of this historic meeting, during which Nazi officials discussed deportations, concentration camps, and the mass murder of millions of people in a cold and bureaucratic language. Through the reconstruction of the conversations that took place at the Wannsee villa, the film reveals the mechanisms of Nazi crimes and the terrifying normalisation of hatred, discrimination, and dehumanisation.

The film serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of confronting the past, preserving the memory of Holocaust victims, and recognising the dangers posed by ideologies of hatred.

Film screening courtesy of the Goethe-Institut Croatia.