Critic Reviews

Gripping, intense and often very moving, The Endless Trench pulls together details from some of the jaw-dropping accounts of these lifelong nightmares, recasting the hidden history of a so-called “mole” and of his endlessly suffering wife as a profoundly involving, superbly played story about love as protection from fear.

This is an intimate epic that alarms as it sprints out of the gate, settles into a lingering tension and even as it is winding down, manages to keep the viewer frightened and on tenterhooks. That’s what living under a fascist regime is like.

The Endless Trench plunges us into a living nightmare with enough atmospheric precision of its own: It needn’t literally spell things out for us.

It’s fertile thematic ground, but as in most survival movies, showy feats of filmmaking take precedence over insight or revelation.