A Plea for the Pope.

Ever since his political masterpiece, "Z," hit movie screens in 1969, Greek director Costa-Gavras has been known as a political filmmaker. His latest picture, "Amen," a blunt look at how Pope Pius XII turned his back on the pleas of a Nazi SS officer to publicly condemn the Holocaust, will only reinforce that reputation. Based on the play "The Representative" by Austrian writer Rolf Hochhuth, "Amen" has ignited a fierce debate across the continent. Even the movie's poster, which melds a crucifix and a swastika, has caused an uproar. Archbishop of Paris Jean-Marie Lustiger charged that the advertisement "triggers hatred... and uses violence as provocation," and a group of French church associations went to court to have it banned. The judge ruled in favor of the film. Costa-Gavras just shrugs. "I never say or think about politics," he says. "I do films on subjects that interest me, and above all talk about society today."

At first it's not immediately clear what "Amen" says about contemporary culture. The play and film are based on the true account of Kurt Gerstein, a devout Protestant and Waffen SS chemist who supplied the Nazis with the toxic gas Zyclon B. Unbeknownst to Gerstein, the gas was used to exterminate Jews in concentration camps. When he finally learned its true purpose, he was so horror-stricken that he enlisted the help of a young Jesuit priest with family ties to the Vatican to plead with anyone who would listen--fellow Germans, the Allies, the Roman Catholic Church and eventually the pope--to denounce the slaughter. No one did. (Gerstein was eventually captured by the French; while in prison, he wrote about the atrocities he saw in the camps, and his report was later used as evidence against the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials.) Though "Amen" is about events that occurred during World War II, Costa-Gavras maintains that its primary subject-- indifference--still plagues society today. "Indifference did not start with the camps nor did it end with the war," he says. "Look at the indifference with which we are letting the African continent die. Our passivity is a crime in itself."

Costa-Gavras became fascinated with the subject when he saw "The Representative" onstage during its first run in Berlin in 1963. That production sparked plenty of controversy of its own; radical Catholics protested outside the theater and threatened the cast. One night an audience member leaped onstage and socked the pope character in the ...