Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years working on SHOAH (1985), a groundbreaking film that fundamentally changed the way the Shoah is represented. Forty years later, filmmaker Guillaume Ribot delves into the vast archive of approximately 220 hours of previously unreleased footage.

Lanzmann’s search to capture the reality of the Shoah on film took him around the world to meet survivors, eyewitnesses, and perpetrators. Despite doubts, setbacks, and missteps, the result was a unique cinematic project that became a milestone in film history and is now listed in UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” Register.

Using only Lanzmann’s own words — drawn from his memoirs and previously unseen material — the documentary paints a gripping portrait of this extraordinary cinematic undertaking while paying tribute to the director’s tireless effort to make the unspeakable speakable.

Following the screening, Dominique Lanzmann, Corinna Coulmas, and Irena Steinfeldt-Levy will speak with Johannes Praetorius-Rhein about their many years of collaboration with Claude Lanzmann and the making of SHOAH.