Night Will Fall (DVD)

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened.

Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman and Hitchcock as treatment advisor.

Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums. This eloquent, lucid documentary by André Singer (executive producer of the award-winning The Act of Killing) tells the extraordinary story of the filming of the camps and the fate of Bernstein’s project, using original archive footage and eyewitness testimonies.

• Original trailer
• Death Mills (Hanus Burger and Billy Wilder, 1946, 22 mins): US propaganda film about the Nazi concentration camps
• Oswiecim (Auschwitz) (1945, 22 mins): Russian propaganda film
• Belsen Death Camp Leaders Meet Justice (1945, 2 mins): short newsreel about the Nuremberg trials
• Night Will Fall - Panel Discussion (2014, 13 mins)
  An Interview with Dr Jeremy Hicks at Auschwitz Concentration Camp (2014, 24 mins)
• An Interview with Professor Rainer Schulze at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp (2014, 28 mins)
• An Interview with Professor David Cesarani at Buchewald Concentration Camp (2014, 25 mins)
• An Interview with Caroline Moorehead (2014, 13 mins)
• Stills gallery
• Illustrated booklet with full credits and essays