In Lore, Australian director Cate Shortland offers a remarkably sensitive, highly filmic and quietly subtle adaptation of The Dark Room, Rachel Seiffert's difficult novel of German war guilt set in 1945. Turning the English-language Booker nominee into a German-language film full of exquisitely painful imagery, Shortland follows Lore and her four siblings as they trek across Germany to their grandmother's house, struggling to survive the absence of their Nazi parents, the dawning realization of who they were and the horrible realities of what they must now do to live. In the title role, Saskia Rosendahl is utterly convincing as a traumatized young woman experiencing a morally brutal coming of age.
At VIFF: Oct. 1, 4 p.m. Granville 7; Oct. 3, 9:30 p.m. Granville 7
At TIFF: Sept. 10, 4:30 p.m., Winter Garden; Sept. 12, 3 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 16, 9:15 a.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox.