Comedy About Hitler's Return Tops German Box Office

Germany is going crazy for Adolf Hitler. Far from the Bundestag, however, it is the German box office that the Austrian dictator is topping.

A Borat-style film imagining the Fuhrer's return from the dead to modern-day Berlin knocked Disney's Inside Out off the top spot over the weekend to become Germany's number one film, according to The Guardian newspaper.

The comedy film, appropriately titled Look Who's Back (Er Ist Wieder Da), has taken over $13 million at the box office since its premiere three weeks ago. The plot, based on the bestselling satirical novel by German writer Timur Vermes that has sold 14 million copies since being published in 2014, depicts the Nazi leader waking up in 21st century Germany, unaware of world events since 1945.

The book follows Hitler's farcical travels through modern Germany, unwittingly becoming a renowned comic with his own television show. To translate the story to the screen, producers decided to shoot the film in the style of a mockumentary, mixing fictional scenes with the reactions of real as they interact with a man convinced he is Hitler.

"It was incredible, I was suddenly the attraction, like a popstar," Oliver Masucci, the actor who portrays Hitler in the film told The Guardian. "People clustered around me. One told me she loved me, and asked me to hug her. One, to my relief, started hitting me."

Director David Wnendt said his idea "was to find out how people react to Hitler today, and to his ideas and to ask does he have a chance nowadays." Asked whether he found any, Wnendt said, "Unfortunately yes."

"Germans should be able to laugh at Hitler, rather than viewing him as monster because that relieves him of responsibility for his deeds and diverts attention from his guilt for the Holocaust," Wnendt said.

"But it should be the type of laugh that catches in your throat and you're almost ashamed when you realise what you're doing," the director added.