Shoah (1985)

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.

Genres: Documentary, History

What to watch after Shoah

• 9/11 (2002) — Same feel: painful, serious
• The Act of Killing (2012) — Same feel: dark, serious
• The Silence of Swastika (2021)
• No Other Land (2024) — Same feel: painful, serious
• The Look of Silence (2014) — Same feel: dark, painful
• The Last Days (1998) — Same subject: world war ii