Film Focus for Holocaust Themes

Film / Date / Stars / Plot
The Pawnbroker / 1964 / Rod Steiger / Survivor suffers memories of his past imprisonment with living in the ghetto of New York.
Playing For Time / 1980 / Vanessa Redgrave / This film is based on Fania Fenelon’s experiences as a female prisoner in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp where she and a group of classical musicians were spared in return for performing music for their captors.
Sophie’s Choice / 1982 / Meryl Streep & Kevin Kline / Sophie is a Polish immigrant who is forced to choose which one of her two children is gassed and which proceeds to the concentration camp.
Au Revoir, Les Enfants / 1987 / Directed by Louis Malle / Recollections of a French boarding which seems to be a haven until a new student arrives with a secret. (Based on Malle’s childhood).
Voices of Children / 1996 / Documentary / Documentary tells the story of three people imprisoned as children in a concentration camp. It traces their lives through personal drawings and journals.
Apt Pupil / 1998 / Brad Renfro & John Hurt / This film is considered a study in cruelty with Nazism serving as a vehicle for the capacity of evil.
Paper Clips / 2004 / Documentary / This documentary captures how middle school students in a small rural community promised to honor every lost soul by collecting one paper clip for each individual exterminated by the Nazis.
My Left Foot / 1989 / Daniel Day Lewis / The true story of Christy Brown who was born with cerebral palsy. He learned to paint and write with his left foot. Speaks to the courage of the human spirit in the face of uncontrollable obstacles.
I’m Still Here / 2005 / All star cast / Diaries of young people who witnessed first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust. Their accounts are brought to archival footage, personal photos, and texts from the actual diaries.
*Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State / 2005 / Documentary / This is a BBC production that uses Archival footage and the latest academic discoveries to detail the atrocities of a camp that was known as the “killing factory”.