If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the power of film to convey an idea or feeling is simply boundless. Filmmakers for the Prosecution, a new documentary directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz and produced by Sandra Schulberg, examines the search for celluloid to convict the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. Ahead of the film’s opening on Holocaust Day of Remembrance, January 27, in New York at the DCTV Firehouse Cinema courtesy of Kino Lorber, we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the first trailer.
Adapted from Sandra Schulberg’s monograph, the documentary retraces the thrilling hunt for film evidence used to convict the Nazis at the first Nuremberg Trial. The searchers were two sons of Hollywood––brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg––serving under the command of OSS film chief John Ford. The motion pictures they presented in the courtroom became part of the official record and shape our understanding of the Holocaust to this day. Seventy-five years after the trial, French journalist and filmmaker Jean-Christophe Klotz returns to the German salt mines where films lay burning, uncovers never-before-seen footage, and interviews key figures to unravel why the resulting film about the trial––Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today by Stuart Schulberg––was intentionally buried by the U.S. Department of War. Klotz’s riveting film also fills in the gaps of how these groundbreaking materials were sourced, and poses still-pertinent questions about the power of film to write history.
The film features first-hand accounts by Budd Schulberg, head of the OSS search team; Niklas Frank, son of Nuremberg defendant Hans Frank; and French jurist Yves Beigbeder, assistant to French judge Henri Donnedieu de Vabres; scholars Sylvie Lindeperg, Axel Fischer, Alexander Zöller, and Stuart Liebman; and Sandra Schulberg about the decision to suppress the American film about the Nuremberg trial as the Cold War began. The story is carried by Eli Rosenbaum, who served for 30 years in the Office of Special Investigations of the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecuting Nazis in the U.S. and extraditing others to await trial in Germany. As Rosenbaum explains in the film, the “Nuremberg principles” underlie all modern attempts to prosecute crimes against humanity and crimes against the peace.
See the exclusive trailer below.
Filmmakers for the Prosecution opens on January 27 at New York City’s DCTV Firehouse Cinema.