Film > Documentary

For the first time on DVD in Australia — Claude Lanzmann’s landmark documentary about the holocaust, SHOAH.  Lanzmann spent twelve years spanning the globe for surviving camp inmates, SS commandants, and eyewitnesses of the “Final Solution”.  Without dramatic re-enactment or archival footage — but with extraordinary testimonies — SHOAH 
renders the step-by-step machinery of extermination, and through haunted landscapes and human voices, makes the past come brilliantly alive.

SHOAH is a work of genius, an heroic endeavour to humanise the inhuman, to tell the untellable, and to explore in unprecedented detail the horrors of the past.

It is an immensely disturbing experience, yet in its solemnity and beauty not a morbid or disheartening one.  There are few works of art which leave one with such a deep appreciation for the preciousness and meaning of life.  For these reasons, SHOAH is one of the most powerful and important films of all time.

“I consider SHOAH to be the greatest documentary about contemporary history ever made, bar none, and by far the greatest film I’ve ever seen about the Holocaust.” – Marcel Ophuls

“I would never have imagined such a combination of beauty and horror...  A sheer masterpiece.” – Simone de Beauvoir