A Film Unfinished (2010)

Documentary from director Yael Hersonski about the discovery of film canisters containing never before seen footage of the Warsaw ghetto. Holocaust documentaries are inherently dramatic and disturbing, but this one has a detached and analytical style that makes it more chilling than most. The raw footage, seemingly random images of the deplorable conditions, day to day goings on, and bizarre staged scenes like a woman seated at a vanity applying lipstick, are looked at in close detail until the truth starts to seep out. The project, carried out by the Third Reich mere months before the deportations to the death camps, curiously shows all of the horrors of the ghetto (curious because this was intended as propaganda, after all). This starts you thinking, why are they filming this, when they also stage scenes of Jews living "happily"? Also, the Nazis always left plenty of documentation on all their film projects, yet oddly, this one has no paper trail. The ultimate intent may not be known, but nauseating clues emerge when the filmmakers stage scenes of the "wealthy" ghetto inhabitants ignoring their fellow citizens starving in the street, as if to say "Look, even in the ghetto." Ultimately, Hersonski lets the footage speak for itself and leaves it to the viewer to solve the mystery. He also does something that gave me a nightmare when I went to sleep that night: He'll freeze on a face in the crowd, and just let you look into the eyes of a human being, and contemplate his fate.