Shoah

More than a decade in the making, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah is a monumental, nine-hour-plus investigation into the murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis.

Using no archival footage, Lanzmann builds the film through first-person testimonies from survivors, former Nazis, and other witnesses, assembled in a circular, free-associative way.

Intellectual and emotionally overwhelming, Shoah is less about excavating history than showing how the past remains present. It stands, without question, as one of cinema’s most important works.