The Reader (2008 film)

The Reader is a 2008 romantic drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, scripted by David Hare, adapting the 1995 German novel Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink, and starring Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Bruno Ganz, and Karoline Herfurth. The film tells the story of Michael Berg, a Berlin lawyer who, as a 15-year-old in 1958, has a brief summer love affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz. She abruptly leaves, only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past — a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial.