The now familiar vocabulary of concentration camps on movie screens comes with so much baggage that it can stifle a film before it has even begun. But “The Counterfeiters,” this year’s Austrian nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, uses a true story and a complicated moral landscape to plumb new territory in this historic tragedy.

Based on the tale of Operation Bernhard, perhaps the largest counterfeiting undertaking in history, “The Counterfeiters” follows skilled forger Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), who is recruited by the Nazis to create British and American currency at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. With a full staff of artistically and financially inclined prisoners, Sally is ordered to re-create these foreign currencies to flood the market and help the stumbling Nazi war machine push ahead. Through forestalling and a good deal of luck, Hitler’s army collapsed before the plan came to fruition and the team of Jews could be killed. But their production of 134 million British pounds and their subtle sabotages make “The Counterfeiters” one of those stories that would seem fantastical if it weren’t grounded in fact.

Writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky has managed to create a shifting playing field of moral and religious allegiances. Sally, a lifelong criminal forger, becomes the moral center of the film. Sliding through opulence to degradation and back, he navigates the demands of the Nazis and his struggling compatriots, giving hope of survival in a place known for its inhumanity.

Working with the Nazis, he protects his peers and tries to reconcile the task he has been assigned with life outside the prison walls. Attempting to flood the British economy, the Nazis, unsurprisingly, used Jews to do their dirty work. Once it was done, they would lose any privileges and likely their lives.

But sabotage is difficult in an environment where death and disinterest are the only constants, and Sally is nothing if not a pragmatist. A trained artist, he created forged documents and currency in Berlin because it was his most profitable ability. In the camps, he capitalized on the Nazis’ pride, utilizing that skill to garner their favor. It is no small irony that the very skill that got him into this mess to begin with might earn him a chance at survival.

Mr. Markovics provides an intense beacon for a cast of characters trying to survive the violence of their captors while struggling to resolve the guilt created by their preferential treatment and their role in the success of the Nazi party. Though their struggles often tend toward stereotype, Mr. Markovics’s performance, and his relationship with his captor, Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow), who leads the operation and provides their privileges with intense opportunism, propel the film.

In a place where survival seems the only goal, these men focused on a horizon beyond saving their own lives, and the choices made with their minute freedoms helped influence the outcome of a war that continues to teach new generations what evil looks like.

mkeane@nysun.com