22 jan 2025 New Trailer and Poster for SHOAH by Claude Lanzmann

Ahead of its screening in official selection (Berlinale Special) at the 75th Berlinale, mk2 Films reveals a new poster and trailer for Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 milestone film ‘SHOAH’.

Part of the 2025 Berlinale Special programme, SHOAH stands as a monumental work in the history of cinema. Claude Lanzmann received the Honorary Golden Bear in 2013. His masterpiece was previously honoured in Berlin with the Caligari Film Award, the OCIC Award, and the FIPRESCI Prize. In 1987, SHOAH also won two BAFTA awards, including the Flaherty Documentary Award. It was also named the Best Documentary of all time by The Guardian in 2013. Marcel Ophüls called it “the greatest documentary about contemporary history ever made.” In 2023, SHOAH was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. It joins a select few works of cinematic heritage in the Memory of the World collection, including the Lumière Brothers’ archives, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados, and the complete works of Ingmar Bergman.

mk2 Films represents 6 films by Claude Lanzmann. The new poster of SHOAH is the work of acclaimed Polish designer Aleksander Walijewski. The artwork captures that it is only through the collective gaze of the many individuals featured in the film over the course of its 9 hours and 30 minutes that makes it possible to begin to understand what the Holocaust truly was.

mk2 Films is also releasing a new trailer for Lanzmann’s SHOAH: [Play New Trailer]

Lanzmann’s groundbreaking documentary SHOAH made cinematic history with its telling of the story of the “unspeakable” — the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. Lanzmann’s unique and daring formal choice of focusing on the voice of Holocaust survivors without additional archival footage to shape this narrative as well as the unparalleled wealth of  testimonies presented in its epic runtime of 9 hours and 30 minutes make SHOAH a widely acclaimed milestone of the documentary genre. Its production was a long and arduous journey, with preparation and filming spanning from 1973 to 1981, followed by nearly five years of editing.

The Paris-based company is also bringing to Berlin a new film by Guillaume Ribot, which will premiere in Berlinale Special. 40 years after the release of Claude Lanzmann’s monumental film SHOAH, Ribot’s All I Had Was Nothingness reveals the director’s relentless 12-year pursuit to tell the untold story of the Holocaust, using only Lanzmann’s words and never-before-seen footage from the masterpiece. All I Had Was Nothingness is a production of Les Films du Poisson (Little Girl Blue, Academy Award-nominated The Gatekeepers) and Les Films Aleph (A Visitor From the Living, The Karski Report), in co-production with ARTE France.