Shoah

Shoah is Claude Lanzmann's documentary about the Holocaust, built entirely from interviews he conducted himself. Speaking with Jewish survivors of the extermination camps, Polish bystanders who lived near the killing sites, and former Nazis, Lanzmann gathers testimony about what happened and how it was carried out. He returns with his subjects to places such as Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz, letting them describe events in their own words. No archival footage is used; the film consists of present-day material, including secretly recorded conversations with perpetrators, and runs close to nine and a half hours. Lanzmann wrote and directed the film, which he had spent years researching across many countries. It was produced in France and released in April 1985.

The large credited cast is made up of the people Lanzmann interviewed rather than professional actors, among them Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik, Motke Zaidl, Jan Karski and Paula Biren, with Lanzmann himself appearing as the interviewer. On TMDB it holds a rating of 8.2 from 228 votes, and its critics' rating stands at 9.2 from 37 reviews, so critical opinion is noticeably warmer than the already favorable audience response. Shoah remains Lanzmann's best-known work and one of the defining documentary achievements of its era.