A hypnotic and immediately gripping tribute to Claude Lanzmann, the creator of Shoah, and his titanic effort. Guillaume Ribot delved into 220 hours of unused film footage left by Lanzmann after 11 years of shooting his monumental work. The narration is given entirely to the director himself - it consists solely of excerpts from his diaries and interviews. We witness Lanzmann's struggles, torn by doubts and uncertain where this work will lead him; his efforts to secure funding to continue the film; and the "behind the scenes" of its creation, including the technical preparations for secretly recording the confession of a mass murderer. Ribot himself called his work a police investigation into history, in which the protagonist gradually arrives at an understanding of what the Holocaust was. The most famous figures from Lanzmann's masterpiece reappear in the film: Abraham Bomba, the barber from Treblinka; Henryk Gawkowski, the engine driver from Auschwitz; and Szymon Srebrnik, who had been singing for an SS officer in Chełmno nad Nerem. The titular "nothingness" refers both to the shocking lack of material traces in the places where the Holocaust occurred, and to the experience of shooting a film "whose subject would be death itself". This is essential viewing.

Following the screening, we invite you to a discussion titled "The Power of Testimony" ("Moc świadectw").
The conversation will be dedicated to the role of documentary filmmakers and witnesses in confronting the experiences of violence, wars, genocide, and humanitarian crises. We will discuss the process of collecting testimonies, working with oral history, and the challenges associated with engaging with difficult subject matter. A key theme will also be the helplessness that often accompanies the confrontation with suffering. Can conversation be a strategy for overcoming this helplessness? Do testimonies have the power to change reality? We invite you to join our joint reflection.

Panelists: Dariusz Bugalski, Małgorzata Wosińska, Tomasz Łysak, Marta Perchuć-Burzyńska

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Hoc80gfMA

Berlinale IFF, Telluride Film Festival, Festival Lumiere, MDAG FF, Toronto Jewish FF, San Francisco JFF, UK Jewish FF, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Sydney IFF

08-11-2025 17:00, Muzeum POLIN

Language: french, english, german, polish, hebrew    Subtitles: Polish, English