Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes

Shoah

Play trailer Poster for Shoah 1985 9h 21m Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
100% Tomatometer 37 Reviews 97% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories -- survivors, bystanders and perpetrators -- Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Shoah

What to Know

Critics Consensus

Expansive in its beauty as well as its mind-numbing horror, Shoah is a towering -- and utterly singular -- achievement in cinema.

Read Critics Reviews

Critics Reviews

View More
Kate Muir The Times (UK) 01/09/2015
5/5
Its riveting nine hours are perhaps the most important piece of historical cinema we possess. Go to Full Review
Kevin Thomas Los Angeles Times 06/03/2014
With his 9 1/2-hour Shoah, Claude Lanzmann has accomplished the seemingly impossible: He has brought such beauty to his recounting of the horror of the Holocaust that he has made it accessible and comprehensible. Go to Full Review
Jay Boyar Orlando Sentinel 06/03/2014
4/4
By straightforwardly presenting interviews with people who lived through the Holocaust, Lanzmann makes it real again. Even more impressively, he helps us to see how the horror could have happened. Go to Full Review
Brian Eggert Deep Focus Review 02/14/2022
4/4
Shoah feels more essential than ever, demanding that its audience not just mourn and monumentalize the past, but experience it. Go to Full Review
Sabrina McFarland Common Sense Media 04/05/2021
4/5
Shoah remains today an essential film to educate about the history of the Holocaust and the issue of intolerance. Go to Full Review
Jordan M. Smith IONCINEMA.com 11/13/2020
Words can not do justice to the elegance, the importance, nor the tragedy that Lanzmann's nine hour opus encompasses. Though an overwhelming undertaking, Shoah is absolutely essential viewing. Go to Full Review
Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View More
Doug J. @Dougiefresh 4d I saw Shoah in 1985 when it was released in the US. It is a profound, haunting insight regarding how people can be complicit to evil by inaction. I never believed we would see it again in our lifetimes until 2025. See more Dave S 03/29/2024 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. See more S R @ScottR 10/24/2023 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. See more william d @acsdoug 05/19/2022 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. See more 03/10/2022 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. See more William L 01/01/2021 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) See more Read all reviews
Shoah

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW
Marlene 100% 95% Marlene Watchlist Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie 100% 72% Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie Watchlist Tokyo-Ga 60% 78% Tokyo-Ga Watchlist Antonio Gaudi 100% 74% Antonio Gaudi Watchlist The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years 76% 76% The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years Watchlist Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

Movie Info

Synopsis Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories -- survivors, bystanders and perpetrators -- Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Director
Claude Lanzmann
Screenwriter
Claude Lanzmann
Production Co
Les Films Aleph, Ministère de la Culture de la Republique Française, Historia Films
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
French (France)
Release Date (Theaters)
Oct 23, 1985, Limited
Rerelease Date (Theaters)
Dec 10, 2010
Release Date (Streaming)
Mar 2, 2021
Box Office (Gross USA)
$15.6K
Runtime
9h 21m