From Where They Stood

by Christophe Cognet
  • 2021 L'atelier documentaire | OVALmedia
  • 2021 L'atelier documentaire | OVALmedia
  • 2021 L'atelier documentaire | OVALmedia
  • 2021 L'atelier documentaire | OVALmedia

    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

    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