Shoah

(1985)

★ 8.2 IMDb · 227 votes

Genres: Documentary, History

Year: 1985

Runtime: 566 мин

Country: France

Director: Claude Lanzmann

Cast: Claude Lanzmann, Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik, Motke Zaidl, Jan Karski, Paula Biren, Abraham Bomba, Inge Deutschkron, Ruth Elias, Richard Glazar

Plot

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.

Claude Lanzmann directed this 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage. He interviews survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis (whom he had to film secretly since they only agreed to be interviewed by audio). His style of interviewing by asking for the most minute details is effective at adding up these details to give a horrifying portrait of the events of Nazi genocide. He also shows, or rather lets some of his subjects themselves show, that the anti-Semitism that caused 6 million Jews to die in the Holocaust is still alive and well in many people who still live in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere.