Trivia / Shoah

• Extremely Lengthy Creation: The film took eleven years to put together, owed to the sheer volume of interview footage that had to be shot and edited.
• Multi-Disc Work: The Blu-ray release of the film is spread across three discs due to its mammoth 9-and-a-half-hour runtime.
• Troubled Production: The film's 11-year production was beset by a number of difficulties from the outset. The Israeli government commissioned the documentary under the assumption that it would be a standard two-hour film that would take a year and a half to make, only for them to withdraw funding when it became clear that it would go well over both metrics. Many German interviewees were reluctant to speak on-camera, forcing the production crew to film them in secret. When former SS officer Heinz Schubert discovered the film equipment, he physically assaulted director Claude Lanzmann, hospitalizing him for a week before German police charged him with "unauthorized use of the German airwaves." Over 350 hours of footage were shot across six years, and they took an additional five to edit together into a film. While the results were critically lauded, its difficult production resulted in Lanzmann not making another film for nine years.

---