User Score
2 votes
On August 21, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City, after eleven years of exile. The killer, Ramon Mercader, a young Spanish communist, was a character straight out of a spy movie. He was recruited in 1937 by Stalin's secret service when the latter decided to eliminate Trotsky, that tireless opponent. Through the epic story of Trotsky's last years in exile in Mexico, enriched with flashbacks to his political past, this film, a true historical thriller, offers a cross-narrative between Trotsky's life in exile and the setting up, at the same time, of "Operation Duck", the code name for his assassination.
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.
