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Film

Review: Night Will Fall

A documentary that you must see but won't enjoy

September 23, 2014 13:36
Children photographed through the barbed wire at Bergen-Belsen

By

Brigit Grant,

Brigit Grant

1 min read

Assigning a star rating to this documentary would be unthinkable. Everyone from the most digitally-distracted teenager to the oldest Holocaust denier should see Night Will Fall. Without the colour and glittering cast of a Hollywood Shoah production such as Schindler's List, this is a film some will only watch under duress.

But being reminded of what the Jews endured in the camps is crucial at a time when antisemitism is once again so rife.

It fell to Act of Killing director Andre Singer to make this film, which tells the story of, and contextualises, a lost documentary - German Concentration Camps Factual Survey - which was shot at the end of the war by soldier-cameramen who were part of the liberation forces.

It was Sidney Bernstein, latterly assisted by Alfred Hitchcock, who produced the film, intending for it to be seen by anyone in doubt about the Nazi atrocities - notably the German people. Bernstein knew there would be non-believers, even as he watched skeletons of all sizes being dragged into mass graves at Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz and Dachau. So he demanded close-ups of every detail, be it the mountains of discarded spectacles to the haunted faces of the starving survivors.