Oscar Nominee Adam Benzine Shares Director’s Cut of His Film About Claude Lanzmann, Creator of ‘Shoah’

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-nominated filmmaker Adam Benzine is set to release a director’s cut of his acclaimed documentary on Claude Lanzmann, the influential French author, philosopher, and filmmaker renowned for his Holocaust epic, Shoah.

The new version, which expands the original short to feature-length, will premiere on VOD platforms on Sunday under the title The Death and Love of Claude Lanzmann (La mort et l’amour de Claude Lanzmann). This release marks ten years since the debut of Benzine’s original film, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, which received an Academy Award nomination.

A clip from the director’s cut of The Death and Love of Claude Lanzmann is available below.

Claude Lanzmann

“In the decade since we first launched our film, Claude Lanzmann’s stature and legacy as a filmmaker and historian has only grown,” Benzine stated. “One thing we’ve heard frequently over the years is that, at only 40 minutes in length, people wished the film were longer. This new version addresses that, taking a deeper dive into the tumultuous journey that led to the creation of Shoah, while also restoring the film’s original planned title.”

Benzine further emphasized, “It’s such an honor to release this new version to mark the centennial anniversary of Mr. Lanzmann’s birth, in parallel with the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, as well as the 40th anniversary of Shoah’s 1985 release. The film’s themes are more relevant than ever.”

For the original version, Benzine conducted extensive interviews with Lanzmann, discussing various aspects of Shoah, including the secret filming of former Nazis, the challenges of persuading Holocaust survivors to share their stories, and the taxing process of documenting one of history’s gravest atrocities.

Claude Lanzmann nears the Treblinka death camp while making ‘Shoah’

Following its world premiere at Hot Docs in 2015, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah ignited a bidding war, ultimately secured by HBO. The film garnered numerous accolades, including Best Documentary Short at the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival. It was also nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards and the IDA Award for Best Short Documentary.

Filmmaker Adam Benzine

In a 2015 interview following his Oscar nomination for the documentary, Benzine reflected on his time with Lanzmann, describing him as a figure of significant intellect, albeit with a touch of megalomania.

“It was perhaps the interview of my life,” Benzine recounted. “He was exactly as I’d hoped he’d be — lucid, poetic, interesting, eloquent, thoughtful and not nearly as difficult as he can be. I’d like to believe that we built a rapport and that he could see I’d done a lot of research and knew his work inside and out.”

Benzine also highlighted Lanzmann’s personal connection to the Holocaust: “The Holocaust was not an abstract concept to him. He was a Jew in France during the Second World War. If he had been captured, he would have been killed.”

The expanded versions of Benzine’s documentary will feature previously unseen outtakes captured by Lanzmann and his team in the 1970s, digitally restored in high-definition courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The expanded version will be available on lanzmannfilm.com and on various VOD platforms.

The Death and Love of Claude Lanzmann (La mort et l’amour de Claude Lanzmann) is written, produced, and directed by Adam Benzine, co-produced by Kimberley Warner, and executive produced by Nick Fraser. It features an original score composed by Joel Goodman and is edited by Tiffany Beaudin, with cinematography by Alexander Ordanis. International sales are managed by Cinephil, while educational sales are handled by Film Platform.

Lanzmann passed away in 2018 at the age of 92. In an exclusive clip from The Death and Love of Claude Lanzmann, he discusses his relationship with renowned French writer Simone de Beauvoir, who was his romantic partner from 1952 to 1959.