A Film Unfinished
Directed byYael Hersonski
Written byYael Hersonski
Produced byItai Ken-Tor
Philippa Kowarsky
Noemi Schory
Narrated byRona Kenan
CinematographyItai Ne'eman
Edited byJoel Alexis
Music byYishai Adar
Production
company
Release date
  • 24 July 2010 (2010-07-24) (MIFF)
Running time
89 minutes
CountriesGermany
Israel
LanguagesEnglish with subtitles for Hebrew, German and Polish
Box office$311,542(USA)

A Film Unfinished (Hebrew title: שתיקת הארכיון Shtikat haArkhion, German title: Geheimsache Ghettofilm) is a 2010 documentary film by Yael Hersonski.

Summary

The film re-examines the making of an unfinished 1942 German propaganda film (titled Das Ghetto, "The Ghetto") depicting the Warsaw Ghetto two months before the mass extermination of its inhabitants in the German operation known as the Grossaktion Warsaw. The documentary features interviews with surviving ghetto residents and a re-enactment of testimony from Willy Wist, one of the camera operators who filmed scenes for Das Ghetto.

Release

It premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the "World Cinema Documentary Editing Award". At the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, the film won the Best International Feature award.[1] The film was released theatrically in the US on 18 August 2010.[2]

The film's distributor, Oscilloscope, appealed to the MPAA over the film's R rating but was unsuccessful in reclassifying the film.[3][4][5] Oscilloscope says that the R rating is inconsistent with cultural norms because the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is visited by school children, has more graphic footage.[6]

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the documentary has an approval rating of 97% based on reviews from 65 critics. The site's consensus states "A heartbreaking, haunting historical document, A Film Unfinished excavates a particularly horrible chapter of Holocaust history, and in doing so, the film provides a glimpse into the Nazi propaganda machine."[7] On Metacritic it has a score of 88% based on reviews from 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[8]

References

  1. ↑ Etan Vlessing (2010-05-07). "'Film Unfinished' wins at Hot Docs fest". The Hollywood Reporter. AP. Retrieved 2015-10-18.
  2. ↑ Sundance Film Festival 2010 Archived March 28, 2010, at the Wayback Machine entry, Retrieved 3 August 2010
  3. ↑ Cox, Gordon (3 August 2010). "Oscilloscope to appeal MPAA's 'Film' rating". Variety.
  4. ↑ Abrams, Rachel (6 August 2010). "R rating stands for Holocaust docu 'Film'". Variety.
  5. ↑ Catsoulis, Jeanette (August 17, 2010). "A Film Unfinished". The New York Times. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
  6. ↑ Should the Holocaust be Rated R?, Speakeasy, A Wall Street Journal Blog, August 3, 2010
  7. ↑ "A Film Unfinished (2009)". Rotten Tomatoes.
  8. ↑ "A Film Unfinished". Metacritic.
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