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A Film Unfinished

Documentary, History - 2010
A Film Unfinished
7.4
98%
88
Yael Hersonski's powerful documentary achieves a remarkable feat through its penetrating look at another film-the now-infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, showing the manipulations of camera crews in these "everyday" scenes. Well-heeled Jews attending elegant dinners and theatricals (while callously stepping over the dead bodies of compatriots) now appeared as unwilling, but complicit, actors, alternately fearful and in denial of their looming fate.
Director:

Details

Rated:
R
Runtime:
89 min
Release date:
18 Aug 2010
Country:
DE, IL
Languages:
Yiddish, Hebrew (modern), German, Polish, English
Budget:
$0
Revenue:
$0
Awards:
6 wins & 11 nominations

Top Critics Reviews

fresh:
An electrifying essay on film's ability to falsify history.
– Colin Covert,
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
3 Mar 2011
fresh:
Filmmaker Yael Hersonski reshapes the impossibly vile and tragic source material into a devastating record of Nazi criminality.
– Cliff Doerksen,
Chicago Reader,
4 Jan 2011
fresh:
Yael Hersonski's documentary is infuriating, heartbreaking, devastating -- and scary. It depicts a lie upon a lie.
– Bill Goodykoontz,
Arizona Republic,
2 Dec 2010
fresh:
Yael Hersonski's A Film Unfinished reclaims history, teaches a lesson about the reliability of images and raises unanswerable questions about complicity.
– Joe Williams,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
24 Nov 2010
fresh:
A remarkable new documentary that reminds us of film's inherent capacity for lying.
– Chris Vognar,
Dallas Morning News,
4 Nov 2010
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