Night and Fog

Alain Resnais / France / 1956 / The film already had its Czech Premiere / 34 min.

synopsis

With his medium-length documentary, Night and Fog, the French director revisits the phenomenon of systemic extermination of ethnic peoples, which in its terrifying perfection is symbolized by the Nazi concentration camps of modern history. Alain Resnais’ documentary short film follows the woeful development of the mass death camp model: from the trigonometric measurement of space, the construction of buildings, and the deportation of the first prisoners and their intake at camp processing centers to the routine operation of death factories and ultimately the most economical killing of all – a single human rebellion, the “rebellion of death,” which could have been born in powerlessness.

biography

Alain Resnais (1922–2014) was a French film director and screenwriter of the French New Wave. After film studies, he started shooting short documentaries. During his lifetime, he received numerous awards, for example for the films Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Last Year in Marienbad (1961) and Smoking/No Smoking (1993).