Shoah (1985)
Criterion Collection, Restored, Special Edition, 4 Blu-rays English · Blu-ray

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Over a decade in the making, Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour-plus opus is a monumental investigation of the unthinkable: the murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis. Using no archival footage, Lanzmann instead focuses on first-person testimonies (of survivors and former Nazis, as well as other witnesses), employing a circular, free-associative method in assembling them. The intellectual yet emotionally overwhelming Shoah is not a film about excavating the past but an intensive portrait of the ways in which the past is always present, and it is inarguably one of the most important cinematic works of all time.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED FOUR-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
2K digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Three additional films by director Claude Lanzmann: A Visitor from the Living (1999, 68 minutes); Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (2001, 102 minutes); and The Karski Report (2010, 49 minutes)
Conversation between Lanzmann and critic Serge Toubiana
Interview with Lanzmann from 2003 about A Visitor from the Living and Sobibór
Interview with Caroline Champetier, assistant cameraperson on Shoah, and filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin
All I Had Was Nothingness (2025), a new film by Guillaume Ribot, edited from previously unreleased footage and recounting the production of Shoah
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and writings by Lanzmann

Cover by Sam Smith