"Lore" is both gripping and suffocating; at times it feels like filmmaker Cate Shortland is forcibly prying open your eyelids like that scene in "A Clockwork Orange," impelling the viewer to confront the horror of what's happening on screen. And that's because feeling the unbearable heaviness of reality is what "Lore" is all about.

The year is 1945, and we meet a Nazi family. The Allied Forces have begun their sweep through Germany. The mother of the house (Ursina Lardi) is frantically burning papers while trying to stuff valuables into a bag. The father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) has turned into a dithering idiot, ready to run out the door and abandon his family. Fourteen-year old Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) observes her parents and the swastika flag rumpled on the floor, and draws the conclusion that she has been cheated. The Nazis are not the superheroes she had been raised to believe. Then what were they?

While there are films galore about the Third Reich and its victims, it's very rare to see one that deals with the families of Nazis, and the fate that awaited them after the surrender. Lore's parents are arrested and taken away, leaving her to contend with her four siblings, one of whom is a baby. Their only chance of survival is to reach their grandmother's place in Hamburg, though between Lore's family and her grandmother lies a history of political disagreement and estrangement.