《波斯語課》的故事梗概十分簡單：A young Jewish man pretends to be Iranian to avoid being executed in a concentration camp in the Holocaust drama Persian Lessons.爲躲避納粹對猶太人的屠殺，也爲自己在集中營中不被處刑，一名猶太男子假裝自己是伊朗人。
電影故事的靈感來源於歷史上真實的事件，根據編劇Wolfgang Kohlhaase的短篇小說Erfindung einer Sprache（《語言的發明》）改編而成。納老師在採訪中提到：“The film is especially important and relevant in our time,” said Perelman. “It tells a profoundly powerful, heartbreaking story that is infused with tragedy, irony, the kindling of hope and friendship among the unlikeliest in the unlikeliest circumstances. I am honored and pleased with the opportunity to widen the worldwide audience and fans of the film.”
電影中有兩大不能忽視的主題，“記憶”還有“友情”。關於這兩點，納老師說道：“Memory is one of the strongest themes in the film, and also inventiveness. I think human inventiveness and what the strong human spirit can do to survive is truly amazing. I think you can actually feel it in the script. And the incredible outcome of this story is that the way Gilles transforms prisoners’ names into foreign language words is immortalizing them. During the war there were all those people who have vanished completely and remained unknown because all the archives and all the registers of the camp were burnt by the Nazis.”
I think I try to show that we are all people, we are all capable of love and we’re all capable of evil things as well as horrific acts of hatred. There is no such thing as an absolute good and absolute evil. It’s always somewhere in the middle.我想展現的是，我們都是人類，我們有愛的能力，我們也有邪惡的一面，會因爲憎恨做出一些殘忍的行徑。沒有絕對的好和絕對的壞，中間的灰色地帶是存在的。
