Der Hauptmann

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We are having a German film festival here in Melbourne and the highlighted move is "The Captain" or in German Der Hauptmann"
It tells the story of German war criminal Willi Herold, who assumed a stolen identity as a German officer and orchestrated the killing of deserters and other prisoners at one of the Emslandlager concentration camps.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6763252/

The movie is weird (and maybe a little disturbing) in that it looks life through the eyes of a Nazi. After he steals the identity of German officer he takes on duty of killing prisoners in a concentration camp in closing stages of WWII with great enthusiasm even to the horror of his fellow soldiers.

The movie invokes the famous psychology experiments conducted by Milgram in Yale which demonstrated how otherwise normal people can be made to obey authority and commit terrible acts on others.

However, a lingering thought remains as whether we can pass off pathological violence purely to circumstance? "The Captain" is kind of "a get out of jail" for the Germans who are still dealing with what they did to hapless millions of innocents...only within one lifetime ago.....

Sounds like something I'd like to see.

The Germans make some pretty good films...another one I really enjoyed was German History X which gave a fascinating insight into the old East Germany following a group of young people as they handled the fall of communism

I've seen this movie before and the only question that remained at the end was: Why didn't this movie win an Oscar? Then I remembered that the Oscar only rewards weak films. At least in the last few years...

Don't need an Oscar to be a good film?

Not anymore. Any film of average quality can win an Oscar these days. While many excellent films (most films from outside the United States) do not even appear in the selection.

That's a fair point. Although Hollywood gets a bad rap, their industry does funnel more money into films (or attracts more investors) than overseas film companies.

But quality should not be based on the whom the best actors you can attract with money. What are examples of weak films?

Green Book (a good film but far from excellent) and Roma (good photography but tedious script). Blackkklansman... I'm not only talking about the winners but also the nominees. The overall quality has dropped a lot.

I see, the movies you mentioned are based on real events which makes it challenging to be creative (i.e. loses the creative element).

Are there any good Brazilian movies? I have watched a Brazilian TV series called 3% which is interesting

Good (really good) Brazilian movies are very few. City of God is one. Elite Squad is interesting (the first Elite Squad is a bit fascist. The second is better). The first ones from Zé Do Caixao (Coffin Joe) are fun. You will see huge lists of " expert " critics listing several movies (most of them in black and white) but believe me... Brazil is very weak in movies. I watched an episode of the 3% series and I didn't go any further.