Shoah

1985. France. Directed by Claude Lanzmann. “The NYFCC named Claude Lanzmann’s magisterial nine-and-a-half-hour account of the extermination of six million Jews the best documentary of 1985. Shoah is an historic documentary as well as a great, unique film and, in addressing the issue of representation, a rigorous work of film-philosophy. Refusing to “reconstruct” the past, Lanzmann compels viewers to imagine the unimaginable. For all its devotion to detail, Shoah is a film that ultimately unfolds in the mind’s eye” (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice). NYFCC Best Nonfiction Film, 1985. 564 min.