''A Film Unfinished'' (Hebrew title: ''שתיקת הארכיון'' ''Shtikat haArkhion'', German title: ''Geheimsache Ghettofilm'') is a 2010

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

by Yael Hersonski.

Summary

The film re-examines the making of an unfinished 1942 German

propaganda film A propaganda film is a film that involves some form of propaganda. Propaganda films spread and promote certain ideas that are usually religious, political, or cultural in nature. A propaganda film is made with the intent that the viewer will ad ...

(titled ''Das Ghetto'', "The Ghetto") depicting the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

two months before the mass extermination of its inhabitants in the German operation known as the

Grossaktion Warsaw The ''Grossaktion'' Warsaw ("Great Action") was the Nazi code name for the deportation and mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the summer of 1942, beginning on 22 July. During the ''Grossaktion'', Jews were terrorized in daily rou ...

. 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 The 26th annual Sundance Film Festival was held from January 21, 2010 until January 31, 2010 in Park City, Utah. Award winners *Grand Jury Prize: Documentary - '' Restrepo'' *Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic - ''Winter's Bone'' *World Cinema Jury Prize ...

, where it won the "World Cinema Documentary Editing Award". At the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, the film won the Best International Feature award. The film was released theatrically in the US on 18 August 2010. The film's distributor, Oscilloscope, appealed to the

MPAA The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu ...

over the film's R rating but was unsuccessful in reclassifying the film. Oscilloscope says that the R rating is inconsistent with cultural norms because the

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust his ...

, which is visited by school children, has more graphic footage.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

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." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

it has a score of 88% based on reviews from 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links

*
''A film Unfinished''
a
World War 2 Films

''A Film Unfinished''
site for

Independent Lens ''Independent Lens'' is a weekly television series airing on PBS featuring documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of ''Independent Lens'' were hosted by Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrence H ...

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

''A Film Unfinished''
official web site
Das Ghetto
the original German propaganda film {{DEFAULTSORT:Film Unfinished 2010 films 2010 documentary films Documentary films about films Documentary films about the Holocaust German independent films Israeli documentary films Works about Warsaw Ghetto Israeli independent films Documentary films about unfinished films 2010 independent films 2010s German films