Last of the Unjust
A discursive, essential Shoah postscript centered on as fascinating and inconvenient a figure as may have survived Hitler's annihilation.
The Last of the Unjust
Nineteen seventy five. In Rome, Claude Lanzmann filmed a series of interviews with Benjamin Murmelstein, the last President of the Jewish Council in the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, the only "Elder of the Jews" not to have been killed during the war. A rabbi in Vienna, following the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Murmelstein fought bitterly with Adolf Eichmann, week after week for seven years, managing to help around 121,000 Jews leave the country, and preventing the liquidation of the ghetto.
Twenty twelve. Claude Lanzmann, at 87 - without masking anything of the passage of time on men, but showing the incredible permanence of the locations involved - exhumes these interviews shot in Rome, returning to Theresienstadt, the town "given to the Jews by Hitler," a so-called model ghetto, but a ghetto of deceit chosen by Adolf Eichmann to dupe the world. We discover the extraordinary personality of Benjamin Murmelstein: a man blessed with a dazzling intelligence and a true courage, which, along with an unrivaled memory, makes him a wonderfully wry, sardonic and authentic storyteller. Through these three periods, from Nisko in Poland to Theresienstadt, and from Vienna to Rome, the film provides an unprecedented insight into the genesis of the Final Solution. It reveals the true face of Eichmann, and exposes without artifice the savage contradictions of the Jewish Councils.
"A historic film." Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“A monumental film." Kent Jones, Film Comment
“Utterly fascinating…A reminder of another way documentaries can be made: simply, agonizingly, without comedy or narcissism, and with unforgettable, almost unbearable power.” Stephen Marche, Esquire
Official Selection
2013 Cannes International Film Festival
2013 Toronto International Film Festival
2013 New York Film Festival
Twenty twelve. Claude Lanzmann, at 87 - without masking anything of the passage of time on men, but showing the incredible permanence of the locations involved - exhumes these interviews shot in Rome, returning to Theresienstadt, the town "given to the Jews by Hitler," a so-called model ghetto, but a ghetto of deceit chosen by Adolf Eichmann to dupe the world. We discover the extraordinary personality of Benjamin Murmelstein: a man blessed with a dazzling intelligence and a true courage, which, along with an unrivaled memory, makes him a wonderfully wry, sardonic and authentic storyteller. Through these three periods, from Nisko in Poland to Theresienstadt, and from Vienna to Rome, the film provides an unprecedented insight into the genesis of the Final Solution. It reveals the true face of Eichmann, and exposes without artifice the savage contradictions of the Jewish Councils.
"A historic film." Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“A monumental film." Kent Jones, Film Comment
“Utterly fascinating…A reminder of another way documentaries can be made: simply, agonizingly, without comedy or narcissism, and with unforgettable, almost unbearable power.” Stephen Marche, Esquire
Official Selection
2013 Cannes International Film Festival
2013 Toronto International Film Festival
2013 New York Film Festival
Genre
Documentary
Runtime
218
Language
German,
French,
English
Director
Claude Lanzmann
FEATURED REVIEW
Ela Bittencourt, Slant Magazine
In the opening shot of Claude Lanzmann's The Last of the Unjust, the 87-year-old legendary documentarian addresses the camera from the train platform in Bohusovice, a station through which, starting in 1941, transports of Jewish deportees disembarked for the camp-ghetto of Terezin or Theresienstadt ...
Played at
Royal 2.07.14 - 2.20.14
Town Center 5 2.07.14 - 2.20.14
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