Director Silvio Soldini’s wartime drama The Tasters is a gripping and deeply affecting film. Inspired by the testimony of Margot Wölk, who claimed in 2012 that she had been forced to taste Adolf Hitler’s food during the second world war, the film examines survival and moral compromise among those caught inside the machinery of the Nazi regime.

The film is adapted from Rosella Postorino’s 2018 historical fiction novel The Women At Hitler’s Table (also known as At The Wolf’s Table in the US), itself inspired by Margot Wölk’s account.

At its centre is Rosa Sauer (Elisa Schlott), a young woman who leaves Berlin in 1943 to live with her parents-in-law in rural East Prussia while her husband fights on the Russian front. Hoping to escape the bombing of the capital, she quickly finds herself facing a different danger when Nazi soldiers arrive and force her into a van with several other women from the village.

They are taken to the nearby Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s secret headquarters, where the women are ordered to taste every........

© The Conversation