✓ YES — Watch it

Shoah

1985 · 9h 26m · Documentary, History

IMDb 8.7 Metacritic 99 RT 100%

Watch it tonight only if you're prepared for a grueling, essential masterpiece—this 9.5-hour Holocaust documentary is a moral obligation, not entertainment, but Lanzmann's refusal to sensationalize and his commitment to raw testimony make it one of cinema's most important films. Skip if you need escapism; watch if you need to bear witness.

Plot

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.

Related Movies

Night and Fog (1956)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · History

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Stop Making Sense (1984)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · Music

A concert film documenting Talking Heads at the height of their popularity, on tour for their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues." The band takes the stage one by one and is joined by a cadre of guest musicians for a career-spanning and cinematic performance that features creative choreography and visuals.
Isle of Flowers (1989)

✓ Watch it

Documentary

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · Music

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
For All Mankind (1989)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · History

A testament to NASA's Apollo program of the 1960s and '70s. Composed of actual NASA footage of the missions and astronaut interviews, the documentary offers the viewpoint of the individuals who braved the remarkable journey to the moon and back.
Baraka (1992)

✓ Watch it

Documentary

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.