The Memory Thief

Lukas works as a tollbooth operator and keeps to himself. He has little social life and spends most of his free time visiting his catatonic mother in the hospital. His routine is orderly, quiet, and emotionally distant.

A tollbooth customer tosses him a copy of Mein Kampf. Reading it, Lukas finds the words stimulating and troubling the more he contemplates them. The moment marks the start of his fixation on memory and the Holocaust.

As Lukas drives through his booth, a Holocaust survivor publicly berates him for idolizing the past. The confrontation leaves Lukas shaken and curious about the survivor's experiences. It foreshadows the deeper obsession that will follow.

The next day the old man gives Lukas a videotape containing his concentration camp testimony. Lukas watches it closely, drawn to every detail and memory. The tape becomes the catalyst for his growing fixation.

Lukas spots the old man's obituary in the newspaper and decides to attend the man's funeral. He travels to the event with a sense of purpose that feels more like destiny than curiosity. The funeral marks the first real turning point in his obsession.

At the funeral, Lukas is confronted by Mira, a medical student who challenges his reasons for attending. They argue about his motives and whether he is exploiting the dead for voyeuristic reasons. Lukas shows her the witness tape, trying to convince her of the importance of memory.

Lukas meets Mira again at the hospital where her father, a camp survivor, is connected to the same world of memory. He asks Mira out, and she agrees, though she remains suspicious of his obsession and the idea that memory alone can define him. Lukas insists that remembering is essential to understanding who he is.

Lukas begins working for the Holocaust organization that creates survivor interview tapes. His fixation deepens as he hoards tapes and watches several on different TVs, wearing a yellow star and plastering his wall with camp images. He also starts incorporating the numbers into his life, even buying lottery tickets with tattooed IDs and giving a pink triangle to his coworker Dominique.

Lukas is fired for conducting an interview before he is properly trained. The burden of recalling memories weighs on Mira's father, who kills himself, leaving Mira to blame Lukas for his death. The combined consequences shake Lukas to his core.

Lukas buys his own camera and wanders the streets, shoving a camera in people's faces and asking if they are Jewish, insisting they are lucky to be alive. He pushes for changes in the tollbooth's lanes and becomes increasingly erratic, which eventually gets him fired again. The line between memory and madness continues to blur.

Lukas begins to believe he is the last Holocaust survivor. He shaves his head and tattoos an identification number on his arm, adopting the persona of a prisoner and fueling his own paranoia. This self-styled identity deepens his isolation.

Lukas confronts neo-Nazi skinheads and is beaten, a brutal reminder of the violence surrounding his obsession. A woman in the hospital bed confronts him, accusing him of not being her son, and he does not deny it. He relinquishes his shoes to a coworker and, wearing a home-made prisoner uniform, sets off on a self-imposed death march.