Der Film war echt spannend.

to be

Breakdown of Der Film war echt spannend.

• der Film: the film
• spannend: exciting
• echt: real

Questions & Answers about Der Film war echt spannend.

Why is it Der Film and not Das Film or Die Film?

In German, every noun has a grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter.

• der = the (masculine, nominative singular)
• die = the (feminine, nominative singular; also all plurals)
• das = the (neuter, nominative singular)

The noun Film is grammatically masculine in German, so it must take the article der in the nominative case:

• der Film = the movie / the film

You just have to memorize the gender with each noun:

• der Film
• die Zeitung (the newspaper)
• das Buch (the book)

There is no logical reason why Film is masculine; it’s simply part of the word’s dictionary entry.

Why is Film capitalized?

In German, all nouns are capitalized, no matter where they appear in the sentence.

• Der Film war echt spannend.
• Ich habe einen Film gesehen.
• Filme können spannend sein.

So Film is capitalized because it is a noun, not because it is at the beginning of the sentence. This is a fixed spelling rule in German.

What exactly does war mean here, and which tense is it?