The narrator of Israeli director Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished describes the “layers of meaning” locked within the images recorded by Nazi soldiers of the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1942. They are part of a compilation of raw footage that until 12 years ago were assumed to be vérité glimpses of the half-million Jews trapped within the confines of the Ghetto. It was only when a new reel of outtakes — shots of the subjects rehearsing their “spontaneous” moments over and over — was discovered that something closer to the truth about their provenance was revealed. Hersonski’s measured, devastating pursuit of that truth adds another layer of meaning to those reels, even as it methodically spools and studies each one.
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REVIEW: Film Unfinished Leaves Haunting Impression of Nazi Imagemakers, Victims
