Based on rushes of an interview Maurice Rossel gave to Claude Lanzmann, during the filming of SHOAH, the film is a powerful and haunting exploration of denial and complicity. It gradually delves into the mind of a man who, despite being immersed in the Nazi extermination system on two occasions, claims to have seen nothing of it. A VISITOR FROM THE LIVING shows the power of propaganda and the disturbing ease with which truth can be obscured.

A VISITOR FROM THE LIVING is based on a 1979 interview between Claude Lanzmann and Maurice Rossel, a delegate from the International Committee of the Red Cross, who visited Eichman’s model ghetto, Theresienstadt, in June 1944. In his report on the visit, Maurice Rossel described conditions in the camp as ‘satisfactory’. This is the portrait of a rare witness to the Shoah: neither victim nor executioner, but living among the dead.