Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 American war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender and Eli Roth. The film tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's political leadership, one planned by a young French Jewish cinema proprietor, and the other by a team of Jewish-American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine. The film's title was inspired by director Enzo G. Castellari's macaroni combat film, The Inglorious Bastards (1978).

Tarantino wrote the script in 1998 but struggled with the ending and chose to hold off filming and instead direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007 (as part of the double feature Grindhouse), Tarantino returned to work on Inglourious Basterds. A co-production of the United States and Germany, the film began principal photography in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a $70 million production budget. Inglourious Basterds premiered on May 20, 2009, at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. It was widely released in theaters in the United States and Europe in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures.

The film was commercially successful, grossing over $321 million in theaters worldwide, making it Tarantino's highest-grossing film at that point, and second-highest to date, after Django Unchained (2012). It received multiple awards and nominations, among them eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. For his role as Hans Landa, Waltz won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award, as well as the BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Synopsis

In 1941, SS colonel Hans Landa, the "Jew Hunter", interrogates French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite as to the whereabouts of the last unaccounted-for Jewish family in the neighborhood. Under threat of continued harassment from the Germans, LaPadite reveals that the Dreyfus family is hidden under the floor. Landa orders SS soldiers to shoot through the floorboards and kill the family. All are killed except Shosanna, who escapes and flees through the field. Landa watches her go, deciding not to shoot her at the last second.

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