Shoah is a 1985 documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann, running over nine hours, built entirely from interviews with Holocaust survivors, former Nazi perpetrators and Polish bystanders conducted over more than a decade of filming, with no archival footage or reenactment used anywhere in the film. Lanzmann instead returns repeatedly to the physical sites of the death camps as they stood at the time of filming, letting witnesses describe what happened there in their own words and, in several cases, through hidden-camera interviews with former perpetrators who did not know they were being filmed. Shoah is widely regarded as one of the most important and formally uncompromising documentaries ever made about the Holocaust, and its interview-only, no-archival-footage method has been highly influential on later historical documentary filmmaking.
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Original Language Original Language Original Language Original Language AwardNew York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Non-Fiction Film 2 AwardBAFTA Award for Best Documentary 2 Release Year CountrySourced to the subject's own account FAQs
What happened to the footage Claude Lanzmann filmed for Shoah but did not use?
The museum in Washington bought the unused footage in 1996 and preserves about 185 hours of interview outtakes and 35 hours of location filming.
The film runs about nine and a half hours, yet it was cut from far more material. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum bought the Shoah outtakes from Claude Lanzmann on October 11, 1996, and museum staff have since worked to reconstruct and preserve about 185 hours of interview outtakes and 35 hours of location filming. The collection is held as an archive of the unused interviews and sites, separate from the finished film.
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Source Shoah (Wikipedia)
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Source Shoah (Wikipedia)
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Original Language
Also in Language Atlas: the original language of this subject.
Also in Language Atlas: the original language of this subject.
Also in Language Atlas: the original language of this subject.
Also in Language Atlas: the original language of this subject.
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Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.
Sources
1. Wikidata: Shoah
Wikidata Q1720765, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source 2. Shoah (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia: 'including the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Non-Fiction Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary' (checked 2026-09-26)View the Source 3. Shoah (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead sentence, Wikipedia article
Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film about the Holocaust, directed by Claude Lanzmann.
Lead sentence, Wikipedia article, original language
Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film about the Holocaust, directed by Claude Lanzmann.
In Medium: Film, Article lead sentence
Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film about the Holocaust (known as "Shoah" in Hebrew since the 1940s), directed by Claude Lanzmann.
Created By: Claude Lanzmann, Article lead sentence
Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film about the Holocaust (known as "Shoah" in Hebrew since the 1940s), directed by Claude Lanzmann.
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