The film was partially inspired by the short story Erfindung einer Sprache by German writer Wolfgang Kohlhaase.

[3] They bring him to a nearby concentration camp where Koch, the deputy commandant, asks to be taught the Persian language.

This task seems impossible, so Reza escapes the camp when taking out slop from the kitchen, and encounters a French man in a wood who advises him to return, which he does.

Koch orders Reza to neatly copy into a ledger a list of newly arrived prisoners, omitting crossed out names as those died en route.

Koch learns that Reza has joined a consignment of prisoners walking to the train station to be conveyed to a death camp.

Soon afterward, Commandant Beyer learns that the American Army is approaching and orders his officers to destroy all records and execute the remaining prisoners.

The fake version of Persian spoken in the film was invented by a Russian philologist at Moscow State University, who based the vocabulary on the real names of documented victims of the Holocaust.

The website's consensus reads: "Persian Lessons is somewhat dramatically contrived, but it remains an effectively tense drama that's elevated by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart's performance.