France / 94'’ / Couleur / statut : completed / French, English, German, Polish, Hebrew / long feature-film
Claude Lanzmann spent 12 years creating Shoah (1985), a groundbreaking film that redefined Holocaust representation. 40 years later, filmmaker Guillaume Ribot explores 220 hours of unreleased footage.
Lanzmann’s quest to capture the reality of the Holocaust led him to interview victims, witnesses, and perpetrators from all over the world. Overcoming doubt, setbacks, and false leads, he embarked on an unparalleled journey culminating in a landmark masterpiece, now part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
Only using Lanzmann’s own words drawn from his memoirs and never-before-seen excerpts, Guillaume Ribot pays homage to one of cinema’s masterpieces and to its director’s relentless pursuit of telling the untold.
Presse
«Guillaume Ribot highlights the massive personal and logistical undertaking that Shoah necessitated. We also see to what extent Shoah wasn’t just documented, but directed.»
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
«ALL I HAD WAS NOTHINGNESS is a phenomenal work of editing. You wonder how [Guillaume Ribot and his editor] dared, but they approach it with intelligence and sympathy. A film that frames Shoah, but is also a continuation of it.»
SCREEN
«In an exciting story created from previously unreleased footage filmed by Claude Lanzmann, Guillaume Ribot succeeds in capturing the very essence of the monumental film.»
TELERAMA
«Between investigative film and exceptional transmission of memory... A wonderful homage anchored in a captivating film that can be both a supplement or an introduction to the major and eternal work that Shoah is and forever will be.»
CINEUROPA
«ALL I HAD WAS NOTHINGNESS avoids sentimentality in its startling frankness. An observational work, it offers us the opportunity to see for our own eyes those who witnessed, aided and abetted the Holocaust. ALL I HAD WAS NOTHINGNESS is an absorbing and worthwhile tribute.»
FILMUFORIA
«Ribot’s own voiceover, as he narrates Lanzmann’s writing, is soothing, though the words are often jarring. The interviews help put together a picture of the filmmaker behind Shoah, a man tormented by ghosts which must have accompanied him all through his 90-plus years on earth.»
INTERNATIONAL CINEPHILE SOCIETY
