All I Had Was Nothingness

Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years creating Shoah (1985), a groundbreaking work that revolutionized the representation of the Holocaust in cinema. Four decades later, filmmaker Guillaume Ribot immerses himself in over 220 hours of unreleased footage from the original filming. Lanzmann’s quest to capture the reality of the Holocaust led him to interview victims, witnesses, and perpetrators around the world. He embarked on an unparalleled journey that, despite doubts, setbacks, and false leads, culminated in a landmark of film history. In 2023, the film was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Now, Ribot draws solely upon Lanzmann’s own words—from his memoirs and previously unseen footage—to pay homage to one of cinema’s masterpieces and to its creator’s relentless pursuit of telling the untold.