While it may not be the best documentary ever made, Shoah is most certainly the most impactful and the most important, as well as being remarkably timely when one considers the age in which we are living. Claude Lanzmann's horrifying epic, clocking in at over 9 hours, consists primarily of interviews with survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Despite the intimidating running time, the film is compelling from start to finish, never shying away from the horrors of its subject, a sickening and stomach-churning viewing experience, but a viewing experience that needs to be seen. If there is one complaint, it is the use of the subtitles – too often, subtitles are provided for the interpreter's response to the subject's answer instead of simply providing the subtitles for the subject's response, effectively doubling the length of the interview, a problem considering the already considerable length of the film.

1001 movies to see before you die. It took a long time to find this, but fortunately it turned up on YouTube. It is such an amazing accomplishment to have such an expansive, in depth view of the holocaust. It felt like it was incomplete and I was often a little confused to the structure. Regardless, I learned so much and appreciate this 10 year project.

Don't expect to learn why the Germans did what they did. There is no discussion of Nazi ideology here. What you will learn is what the Nazis did and the effect it had on its victims. It is both horrifying and mesmerizing at the same time.

A masterpiece of filmmaking , A story which demands to be told and one which makes us remember how a whole generation was very nearly wiped out . The film will leave you breathless and keep you thinking for days afterwards.

Prolonged and harrowing, but a film that needed to be made and one that needed to be made within a certain timeframe to record the perspectives of eyewitnesses from all sides but with enough time elapsed to digest the atrocities that they either suffered or perpetrated. Lanzmann is uncompromising in his willingness to press for detail, both to recreate events without the assistance of contemporary sources and to gradually lead his subjects to confront experiences that they are often very reluctant to recall, but that posterity demands. Though some might criticize it as an unnecessary addition to an already prolonged runtime, holding back subtitles with respect to dialogue that he himself does not understand is a brilliant design element, one that forces the audience to inhabit Lanzmann's own degree of separation from his interview subjects, one that is only compounded by the pain of the subject matter. A powerful and very important record of one of the most vile events to have been designed in the course of human history, and one of the most emotional documentaries ever made. (5/5)

Excellent documentary that exposes the horrors of the death camps from various perspectives. This needed to be done. Thank you to all the participants that opened up to share their stories and people that made this project happen. I do think that Lanzmann put words into people's mouths at times though.

If you can, watch the Criterion Collection's version. The supplements are essential, and include the best of the shot footage i.e. Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.

Shoah is a very powerful documentary about the holocaust. At nine and a half hours, it is numbing, which is the effect I believe they were going for. You feel like the stories can't get more horrible, but they keep adding up and you are horrified at the weight of what you're hearing, of how the Nazis efficiently and cruelly killed millions in gas chambers, and the desperate horror of being there. There is no archival footage. The movie consists of interviews, shot mostly in close-up (with some exceptions, such as hidden camera footage of interviews with Nazis), panoramas of the overgrown sites where concentration camps were located, and footage of slow-moving trains heading into the locations of the camps. The movie relies on your mind's eye to reconstruct the images as survivors, perpetrators and bystanders relate their eye-witness accounts. The images are almost telepathically communicated to your head, making the experience of this film quite intense. This is a very valuable movie, and it will certainly cause me to pause about making facile comparisons to concentration camps from today's political news.

Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust, the genocide of approximately six million of European Jews conducted by Nazis (and their collaborators) during World War II. It is very difficult to find the words to express or think about the Nazi industry of death. I will rather use two quotes. American Colonel William Quinn said about the Dachau concentration camp: "There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind." Simon Silver, the survivor of the death camp of Chelmno, whose testimony is included in this film, says: "No one can describe it. No one can recreate what happened here. Impossible! And no one can understand it. Even I, here, now. I can't believe I'm here." Everyone should watch this 9.5 hours long documentary, on which the director worked for 11 years. Lanzmann's procedure in the film Shoah is specific: he doesn't use documentary footage at all, only interviews with eyewitnesses, visits historical locations and successfully takes the interviewees on a journey through their memories, so that we as the audience are along with them experiencing the events which they testify about. Due to lack of graphic images of the horrors they are testifying about, we are in a situation to imagine, visualize, live trough - and it's a very, very difficult and painful experience. However, Lanzmann builds the structure of the film very carefully - horrifying testimonies are followed by quiet footage of locations and nature, so we have a few minutes to pull ourselves together and reflect on what we have just heard. Using this rhythm, Lanzmann prevents an overflow of pain and terror in the viewer, preventing you to shut down under the flood of impressions and emotions - throughout the 9.5 hours an intense feeling of horror, despair and anger is being built. The film received very good acceptance and much praise, but also some very harsh criticism, particularly in Poland where it was characterized as misleading because it failed to mention that many Poles helped Jews and hid them from the Nazis, saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, as well as that the Nazis killed about three million Polish civilians. Also, Lanzmann has been criticized for lack of political and historical context and too much focus on the personal stories. Despite the criticism, this astonishing film is a masterpiece and is considered one of the best documentaries ever made. Definitely something everyone should watch.

What a film. I'm not even into documentaries, but this one just works. Directed by Claude Lanzmann (who recently passed away earlier this month). The movie is a 9 1/2 hour (yes you read that right) documentary on the Holocaust. Instead of actually showing footage/archival footage of the event the movie is a series of interviews with three types of people. Jews that were in the concentration camps, people that were in the areas witnessing the events and then finally SS officers that were still alive during this time (it was filmed during the late 70's and early 80's). The approach this way makes this very touching as you are basically witnessing interviews and conversations seeing peoples actual reactions. I would say that every type of interview adds to the experience of this documentary. From the barber that breaks down remembering the events, to the SS officer that conveniently just doesn't remember everything. It's a well done film that is broken up into 4 parts (which i recommend how to watch it unless you have a bladder of steel). It's a beautifully shot film that doesn't even feel dated and gave me a much deeper perspective of the Holocaust and the things that people had to go through during this terrible time. Definitely, would recommend this for any people that love documentaries and even for people that have an appreciation of history.

Con diferencia el MEJOR y mas completo documental sobre el holocausto de la historia del cine. Es muy larga(casi 10 horas)pero desde luego la experiencia es mas que brutal.

Everything that Schindler's Ark wasn't, and true.

How can a doc made 40 years ago, focused on a topic that happened 70 years ago yet has remained ubiquitous, be so eye opening? While watching, I kept ponging between "most tedious film experience ever" to "masterpiece of journalistic immersion". By the end, I realized, for a 9+ hour film of talking and long takes of scenery, its palpable emotions make it fly by (relatively) quickly. Its refusal to be pompously or glorifying is stunning, ultimately making it a singularly great film I'll never watch again.

Nearly ten hours of the most unsettling stories you will ever hear. Greatest documentary ever made.

goes on & on but never looses u

This is one of this movie that cannot leave anyone unmoved. I honestly can say that I didn't get to comprehend the extension and meaning of the Holocaust until I watched this 9h documentary. Probably, I still don't even get to be close to its understanding now but this has been clear to me after watching the movie. This is the kind of historic document with incalculable value to leave proof of what happened during WWII so nobody can really put it in question. I would even say that this movie should be passed in history class in high-schools all around the world. The work done is huge and, although I would say that, at some points, I don't understand why Lanzmann makes some kind of trivial questions, I reckon that the actual purpose is to make the viewer to understand all the aspects of the happenings: the extraordinary and the casual usual ones. A must to be seen, if you feel strong enough to face the terrible truth and fate of millions of people.

I did it! It took me a long time to get through it, and every time i took a break from it, i felt a bit of shame -- that my life allows me respite from even the tiniest of distresses, that i have the freedom to eat any food i want whenever and however much i want, that i have warm shelter from the cold and cool comfort under the summer heat, i have every expectation of a long life ... yet i can't sit through 566 straight minutes that chronicle one of the single greatest evils the world has ever known. Oddly, "Shoah" isn't a masterfully structured narrative -- not even its episodes are necessarily chronological. Although some subjects appear through various parts of the film, there is no through-line, no single subject to relate to through the film's length. That said, this is a phenomenal record of history -- both of the holocaust and incidentally, life under Communism in late 70s / early 80s Eastern Europe where many of the film's interviews and extensive footage is shot. The quiet establishing shots of this dark history's locations -- 30 to 40 years later -- are at once haunting and beautiful. The subjects' stories are profoundly moving, but somehow not overwhelming -- they often speak coldly, decades of practice suppressing their emotions, many of them having suffered unimaginable guilt for their relatively good fortune. "Shoah" is a film to be seen. Do it.

Worst documentary about holocaust. I can't even stand 20 minutes of that ridiculous interpreter-subtitle routine and the expoliting questions of that smart-a..

In what can only be a disturbing and shocking film I was amazed at how beautiful were the countryside settings for the death camps. It was also very interesting to see what is now archive footage of central and eastern Europe esp. the railway sequences. This is a must see for all mankind.

one of the most powerful things i've ever seen