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In response to the call of the Front de libération nationale (F.L.N., the National Liberation Front), thousands of Algerians from Paris and its surroundings march on October 17, 1961, to protest against the curfew imposed on them. This peaceful demonstration will be violently put down by the police. 50 years on, the filmmaker sheds light on this still taboo subject. Blending testimony and unseen archive footage, history and memory, past and present, the film relates the different stages in these events and reveals the strategy and methods applied at the highest level of the French state: manipulation of public opinion, the systematic challenge of every accusation, the censoring of information in order to prevent investigation.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
FR
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.