From Where They Stood

by Christophe Cognet

From Where They Stood

France, Germany | 2021 | 107:45 min

Original Title:
À PAS AVEUGLES

Formal Categories

History War / Peace Human Rights

Content Categories

Documentary

Synopsis

As men and women desperately attempted to pass images of hell on to us, we have a duty to look at them. From these unprecedented photographs, taken secretly by deportees at the risk of their lives, we are bound to wonder how we could imagine the events of which they bear the incomplete and fleeting traces. This film is putting together an archeology of images as actions, conducting a worried exploration of the capacity and lack of the human imagination when confronted to the most dismal darkness. Such pictures are the only ones of which nature derives decisively from an equal status of authors and subjects. Deportees managed to take such clandestine photographs in at least five camps, from 1943 to the autumn of 1944: Dachau, Mittelbau-Dora, Buchenwald, Auschwitz- Birkenau et Ravensbrück.

Festivals/Awards

2021
71 Berlinale – 51 FORUM
CPH:DOX
Etats généraux du documentaire - Lussas
TiDF – Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (Non competitive section Open Horizons)
Indielisboa (Silvestre section)
Bilrausch Filmfest Basel (International Competition)
Jerusalem Film Festival - Prix du meilleur documentaire dans la section Spirit of Freedom
FID - Festival International de Cinéma - Marseille
Midnight Sun Film Festival (Gems of New Cinema selection)
Biografilm – Bologne
OpenCity Doc - Nominé pour le Open City Award
25 Ji.hlava
COLCOA French Film Festival - Los Angeles
New York Jewish Film Festival
Miami Jewish Film Festival

Cast and Crew

Director Christophe Cognet
Producer Raphael Pillosio (L'atelier Documentaire), Robert Cibis, Lilian Franck (OVALmedia)

Original Languages

French

Co-Production Company

OVALmedia Berlin GmbH
Germany
www.oval.media

Links / Reference

CO-PRODUCTION
L'atelier Documentaire | Raphael Pillosio
www.atelier-documentaire.fr