Wow. This is one of those festival films that you probably wont get to see it elsewhere. It is wordless and created entirely from 1-2 second clips from fictional movies set during WWII and the Holocaust.

It begins with a quote from Claude Lanzmann (Shoah) that some historical traumas should not be shown as fiction, as well as an explanation that much of what we understand of this era comes from fictional depictions.

You really have to let it flow through and around you. Beneath each clip is the name of the film and year and for a while, my eyes would flick from image to title, with a feeling of mostly missing both. Then I gave up and just let myself watch the images.

They are films from 6 decades, and they create a chronological narrative showing people thriving and then the onset of discrimination then purging then imprisonment and destruction. Motifs are repeated – musicians playing, people being pushed through doors, chimneys smoking, shoes and ferocious dogs – and it highlights the stereotypes we have absorbed as well as the universality of human experience.

I thought we might end with liberation but for some reason we are not given that catharsis. Maybe that says something about the fiction we seek being denied as the reality has no happy ending.