The Wannsee conference was recreated from the document.  Other details of the conference were revealed by Adolf Eichmann himself during his infamous 1961 trial for crimes against humanity.  The majority of this film takes place around a table as the participants sit and talk about the Final Solution, but it does not fail to hold the viewer's interest.  As a matter of fact, that  is what makes the film so chilling - the murdering of millions of people is casually discussed and even elicits laughter and jokes from the attendees.   It has the air of a business meeting rather than a meeting about the fate of human lives.   The actors are superb, they all play their parts incredibly well.  I particularly liked Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich, Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, and Colin Firth as Wilhelm Stuckart.  Branagh was brilliant as he captured the nuances of Heydrich's complicated personality.  He shows his cruel side as well as turning on his sticky overbearing sweetness as he tries to cajole people to bend to his will.  I have seen quite a few portrayals of Adolf Eichmann.  In my opinion Stanley Tucci has done the most amazing job in depicting Eichmann's almost chameleon-like quality of changing his personality according to his surroundings thus causing different people to see him in completely different ways.  It was quite interesting to watch Tucci's Eichmann become a submissive, willing lackey nervously tripping over his words when in the presence of the more powerful and dominating Heydrich.  But when he was in the presence of subordinates he became a dominant and cruel personality.  Wilhem Stuckart was one of the writers of the Nuremberg laws (the infamous Nazi race laws) which were brought into effect 8 years prior to the Wannsee conference.   During the conference Stuckart had to deal with Heydrich's overbearing syrupy rudeness, and Colin Firth shows himself to be a powerful actor as Stuckart clashed with Heydrich as well as other attendees who wanted to change the laws.  

Filmmaker John Pierson truly managed to give this film a very natural feel, as if the viewer is a fly on the wall watching the actual conference.  There are a number of points, some of which I did not even realize until someone brought them to my attention after I had seen the film.  First of all, the actors were made to use their own natural accents, nobody was forced to put on a phony German accent.  Even though some had British accents and some had American accents, it was all so natural and the dialogue just flowed along.  Secondly, the scenes were filmed in unusually long takes - some 20 pages or so of script at a time.  This greatly added to the flow and continuity of the film.  This was not problematic because many of these actors are Shakespearean actors with stage experience and are used to memorizing large amounts of dialogue.  Thirdly, the film has no soundtrack.  There is no music playing in the background at all during the conference, adding to the realism.  Lastly, as the actors sat around the table talking, the camera never went above eye level, giving the appearance of taking the viewer right to the table, as if sitting right across from them.  

This film is very dialogue-heavy and the actors are truly chilling as they matter-of-factly discuss such things as forced sterilization; methods of killing; what defines a person as being Jewish; what should be done with half-Jews, quarter-Jews, and German spouses of Jews, etc.,   This film takes the viewer inside one of the most notorious conferences in history.