Dir: Silvio Soldini | Drama 119′
It sounds exciting and The Tasters is certainly a beautifully filmed but curiously un-involving drama that follows seven German women tasked with trying out Hitler’s food, based on Italian author Rosella Postorino’s bestselling novel At the Wolf’s Table inspired by the true story of Margot Wölk.
Here she’s called Rosa Sauer (and is played by Elisa Schlott) and has left Berlin to escape the bombs of World War II, when she finds herself selected to become one of Hitler’s food tasters—joining the other women whose sole job it is to sample every dish prepared for the Führer and ensure it hasn’t been poisoned.
As the war rages on, Rosa finds herself torn between divided loyalties, the chilly tone warming up when she finds herself strangely drawn to the handsome SS officer Lieutenant Ziegler (Max Riemelt), probably because her husband is now missing in Russia, presumed dead, giving the film a few torrid moments. One of the girls, the sharp-tongued Elfriede (Alma Hasun) has a secret that could mean death for them both. That’s if the food doesn’t kill them beforehand.
With authentic attention to detail, production values are immaculate, and so are the performances, particularly from Schlott who is a cool but magnetic presence in this story about female solidarity during wartime.
Quite why six writers were involved in the screenplay is uncertain but this is an intelligent film that eventually becomes compulsive in exploring female friendship, resistance, desire, and the emotional cost of complicity while revealing how intimacy and suspicion can coexist in the shadow of authoritarian power.
IN UK AND IRISH CINEMAS FROM 13 MARCH 2026