A documentary about another documentary is an odd thing. This is not just any documentary though, it is about Shoah (1985), Claude Lanzmann’s 9 1/2 hour epic made over 12 years.

For those who are unaware of it, Shoah is a collection of interviews with people who experienced the shoah, or holocaust, during World War II. There are Jewish people who survived the camps, Jewish people who are press ganged into roles at the concentration camps and were irrevocably involved in the destruction of so many people and Nazis who were in charge of different aspects of the atrocities.

30 years later, we have this documentary that gives us a small insight into Lanzmann’s experience in so doggedly gathering all of the content. The narration is based on his diary writings and so we feel like he is talking to us about his moments of satisfaction and despair as he tried to get the project to completion.

He was making it 30 or more years after the end of World War II, but I think what surprised me most was the level of disinterest in supporting the project and outright hostility from people in Europe, some who stood by and watched at the time, others who weren’t involved but would prefer to deny the details of what happened.

You can see the echoes of the antisemitism that let it all happen. Moments like the Polish farmer who says he can tell that Lanzmann is Jewish by the way he looks and walks and speaks French with a ‘Jewish accent’. I’m not sure there is sympathy so much for those who were complicit, more that it is an opportunity to hear their stories and a way to help keep the memories of so many Jewish people alive. We can also see varying degrees of guilt and shame, and some who seem to feel very little at all.

It has made me want to watch Shoah and it would have been an interesting piece of programming if MIFF had shown both films side-by-side. It would’ve allowed us to immerse ourselves in the stories whilst also have that understanding of filmmaking and documentary making and what it can take sometimes to tell the uncomfortable stories that no one wants to hear.