SHOAH

Review: A documentary that recounts the story of the Holocaust through interviews with survivors, bystanders and perpetrators.
Director: Claude Lanzmann
Actors: Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik, Motke Zaidl, Richard Glazar, Paula Biren, Helena Pietyra, Pan Filipowicz, Pan Falborski, Henrik Gawkowski, Franz Suchomel and Filip Muller
Year: 1985
Genre: Documentary, History and War
Conclusion: 4/5
Out of all the television programs and films there have been about the Holocaust, this is the most harrowing. Mark Kermode quoted about this film “One of the darkest periods of human history”. I do feel that it is an important subject to keep talking about and to keep reminding ourselves of how brutal that time was just to make sure that these events will never happen again. Apparently, this film took 11 years to make – six years recording the interviewees and five years editing 350 hours of raw footage. I feel that it is a film that is still more than ever relevant today than it was in 1985. The late film critic Roger Ebert wrote about this film “There is no proper response to this film. It is an enormous fact, a 550-minute howl of pain and anger in the face of genocide. It is one of the noblest films ever made“. At the Bafta Awards in 1987 this won 2 awards. They were for the Flaherty Documentary Award (Claude Lanzmann) and for the Flaherty Documentary Award (TV). This is on late Barry Norman’s list of 100 Greatest Films of all time that he produced at the start of 2012 in the Radio Times.