Shoah

documentary film by Lanzmann [1985]

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July 13, 2026

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Shoah is a 1985 documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann that focuses on the Holocaust. The film is nine and a half hours long and uniquely avoids archival footage, instead relying on firsthand interviews with survivors, bystanders, and those who aided the Nazis. Lanzmann, a journalist and writer, was known for his strong views and his work on the Holocaust and Israel. He was part of the French Resistance during World War II. Shoah is considered an oral history and was groundbreaking in its approach to documenting the Holocaust. Lanzmann also published a transcript of the interviews titled Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust.12

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Claude Lanzmann
…film was the stepping-stone to Shoah, his most-acclaimed work. After Israel, Why was released, the Foreign Ministry in Israel asked him to create a film on the Holocaust. The film consumed the next 11 years of his life. Perhaps the most-notable aspect of Shoah is that, in nine-and-a-half hours, there…
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…film was the stepping-stone to Shoah, his most-acclaimed work. After Israel, Why was released, the Foreign Ministry in Israel asked him to create a film on the Holocaust. The film consumed the next 11 years of his life. Perhaps the most-notable aspect of Shoah is that, in nine-and-a-half hours, there…
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film
Newsreels and documentaries
Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), for example, a nine-and-a-half-hour examination of the Nazi concentration camps, received limited theatrical distribution in many areas because of its length but still managed to reach wide audiences through the distribution markets provided by the growing cable television and videocassette industries. Ken Burns’s…
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Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), for example, a nine-and-a-half-hour examination of the Nazi concentration camps, received limited theatrical distribution in many areas because of its length but still managed to reach wide audiences through the distribution markets provided by the growing cable television and videocassette industries. Ken Burns’s…
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Holocaust
Artistic responses to the Holocaust
…De Sica; the nine-hour documentary Shoah (1985), directed by Claude Lanzmann; Au revoir les enfants (1987; Goodbye, Children), directed by Louis Malle; Schindler’s List (1993), directed by Steven Spielberg; La vita è bella (1997; Life Is Beautiful), directed by Roberto
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…De Sica; the nine-hour documentary Shoah (1985), directed by Claude Lanzmann; Au revoir les enfants (1987; Goodbye, Children), directed by Louis Malle; Schindler’s List (1993), directed by Steven Spielberg; La vita è bella (1997; Life Is Beautiful), directed by Roberto
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