Holocaust

After World War II, Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t escape the Fuhrer’s shadow. Arrested first by American, then French troops, her property and money seized, she endured interrogations about her tires to the regime. Riefenstahl argued she’d been coerced into making propaganda and wasn’t aware of Nazi atrocities. The image stuck: three denazification tribunals acquitted her (one cautiously branding her a “fellow traveler”), and Riefenstahl began the road to rehabilitation.

Part I. A Filmmaker’s Apotheosis April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical …

The Last of the Unjust Written and directed by Claude Lanzmann France/Austria, 2013 Anyone who has ever experienced the full 9-hour version of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah is likely humbled by such a powerful and riveting document, a witness statement culled from the incomprehensible and unendurable recollections of the victims and perpetrators of the unfathomable horror of the …

Simon and the Oaks Directed by Lisa Ohlin Written by Lisa Ohlin and Marnie Blok Sweden, 2011 During the late 1930’s and 1940’s, young Simon Larsson (Jonatan S. Washer) and his family live in the idyllic Swedish countryside. There, he and his father (Stefan Gödicke) are at constant odds, with Simon wanting to go to …

My Best Enemy Directed by Wolfgang Murnberger Written by Wolfgang Murnberger and Paul Hengge Austria/Luxembourg, 2010 Some have wondered if a movie will ever be able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust. While there are films (Schindler’s List, Sophie’s Choice, The Pianist) that cast a macabre and cautionary depiction of the Shoah, the only …

In Darkness Written by David F. Shamoon Directed by Agnieszka Holland Poland/Germany/Canada, 2011 Better known in the last few years for directing episodes of such shows as The Wire, Treme, and the American version of The Killing, Agnieszka Holland returns to her native Poland for another film of hers concerning the plight of people during …