Ten years after the Holocaust, filmmaker Alain Resnais goes back to the camps. What he shows is somehow even more disturbing because they’re empty.
I found this doc through Jeremy Urquhart’s list of the best documentaries of all time on Collider.
Trailer for “Night and Fog”
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- Nazi officers documented everything. There’s actual footage of prisoners being processed, shaved, and stripped, filmed by the perpetrators themselves.
- The title “Night and Fog” comes from a Nazi program where people were made to disappear without a trace. No records, no bodies, nothing. Just gone.
- The film includes real images of piles of human bodies stacked like firewood and bulldozed into mass graves. It’s horrific.
Watch “Night and Fog”
You can watch “Night and Fog” on HBO Max or Prime Video.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 95/100
- IMDB Rating: 8.6/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 95/100 (Users); 100/100 (Critics)
Director’s Note: Alain Resnais directed this 32-minute short film in 1956—just ten years after the camps were liberated. The script was written by Jean Cayrol, a survivor of Mauthausen-Gusen, which adds a layer of firsthand truth to every word.
Release Date: 1956
Other Unique Stuff
- The short shows green grass at Auschwitz, but then tells you people are buried right under it. Not long ago either.
- It talks about horrible things (like experiments on prisoners) in a calm, matter-of-fact way. That almost makes it worse.
Wrap Up:
“Night and Fog” is short, but it hits harder than most full-length documentaries. It shows history and forces you to sit with it.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc