Reader, The

Based on the book Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink, The Reader stars Academy Award® winner Kate Winslet as a mysterious and lonely working-class older woman in post-World War II Germany, who has an elicit summertime affair with a young local teenage boy, who later in life is forced to decide how far he'll go to protect her secret. A young Michael (Kross) is heartbroken when Hanna (Winslet) inexplicably disappears after their passionate summer together, only to have her re-enter his life eight years later when he is a law student and she is on trial for Nazi war crimes committed long before they met. Michael must then decide whether to use a secret that only he knows in order to save his onetime love from a life in prison. (Gary Reber)