21 may 2024 mk2 Films Acquires Worldwide Rights to Claude Lanzmann’s Films, Including ‘Shoah’

mk2 Films announces the acquisition of the French and worldwide rights to Claude Lanzmann’s films, including his monumental film Shoah, which is inscribed in UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” Register.

Edited over five years from two hundred and thirty hours of footage and virtually no archival images, Shoah is considered one of the most important works in world cinema. With a duration of nine and a half hours, it is the result of twelve years of research, giving voice to the protagonists of the concentration camps—survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders—to tell the unspeakable story of the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. An essential historical and memorial work, the film is available in a restored 4K version.

In addition to Shoah (1985), which has won multiple awards worldwide and received two BAFTA prizes, the agreement with the production company Les Films Aleph also includes five other films by the French filmmaker and writer: The Karski Report (2010, TV), Lights and Shadows (2008), A Visitor from the Living (1999), Tsahal (1994, nominated for the César Awards), and his first film Israel, Why (1973).

“It is a tremendous honor to be entrusted with Claude Lanzmann’s work,” comments Nathanaël Karmitz, Chairman of the Board of mk2. “His vital work, the result of a lifetime of commitment, must be restored, preserved, and passed on as widely as possible to new generations. This is what we will energetically strive to achieve, in line with our company’s philosophy.”

“By entrusting Claude Lanzmann’s cinematic work to mk2 Films,” says his widow Dominique, who holds the moral rights for Claude Lanzmann films, “I wish to amplify the action undertaken by the Claude and Felix Lanzmann Association for the inscription of Shoah in UNESCO’s Memory of the World. I have chosen Nathanaël Karmitz as the partner who meets the current and future challenges posed by negationism and anti-Semitism, to which only a masterful work of art can respond.”

A former resistance fighter honored militarily at Les Invalides, grand officer of the National Order of the Légion d’Honneur, and grand cross of the National Order of Merit, Claude Lanzmann received an honorary Golden Bear for his entire body of work at the 2013 Berlinale.

2025 will mark the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Shoah’s theatrical release in France (April 30, 1985) and the centenary of Claude Lanzmann’s birth (November 27, 1925).