In 1943, Joseph Goebbels proudly declared Berlin “free of Jews.” Though he did come markedly close to his goal, around 1,700 Jews managed to endure in secret through the war. “The Invisibles” tells the stories of a few of these survivors, bringing their astonishing histories to life in straightforward but consistently compelling fashion.
Director Claus Räfle interviews four Jews who are now in their 90s, all of whom eloquently share their experiences as teenagers in Berlin. Interspersed with their memories are dramatic re-enactments, a risky approach handled with enough skill to add to the film’s depth.
Hanni Weissenberg was an orphan when she was forced, at 17, into a terrifying homelessness. As played in flashback by Alice Dwyer, she dyes her hair blonde and spends her days seeking refuge in movie theaters. Every soldier who flirts with her brings untold danger, but one winds up offering crucial salvation.
Also Read: Claude Lanzmann,...
Director Claus Räfle interviews four Jews who are now in their 90s, all of whom eloquently share their experiences as teenagers in Berlin. Interspersed with their memories are dramatic re-enactments, a risky approach handled with enough skill to add to the film’s depth.
Hanni Weissenberg was an orphan when she was forced, at 17, into a terrifying homelessness. As played in flashback by Alice Dwyer, she dyes her hair blonde and spends her days seeking refuge in movie theaters. Every soldier who flirts with her brings untold danger, but one winds up offering crucial salvation.
Also Read: Claude Lanzmann,...
- 1/23/2019
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
Less than half a year after Claude Lanzmann’s passing this past summer, the Quad Cinema in Manhattan has this week premiered the late documentarian’s Shoah: Four Sisters, a compilation of four short features described as “satellites” of his 1985 Holocaust magnum opus. Comprised of selections from the staggering private archive of interview footage compiled by Lanzmann during Shoah’s 11-year research and filming process in the 1970s, the four segments respectively consist of four extended one-on-one interviews with Jewish women who survived the Nazi death camps across Eastern Europe, each one sharing her harrowing personal story of atrocities witnessed and, at times, horrifying compromises made.
The four women speak different languages, hail from different cities, and lived very different lives before and after the war, but in labeling them as “sisters,” Lanzmann draws attention to the identity formed by shared trauma and collective witness to history. Indeed, all of...
The four women speak different languages, hail from different cities, and lived very different lives before and after the war, but in labeling them as “sisters,” Lanzmann draws attention to the identity formed by shared trauma and collective witness to history. Indeed, all of...
- 11/18/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
They aren’t sisters in a familial sense. But Ruth Elias, Ada Lichtman, Hanna Marton, and Paula Biren share a terrible kinship: They are the only people from their respective families to survive the Nazi Holocaust. In “Shoah: Four Sisters,” the latest and last film from director Claude Lanzmann — the man behind the 1985 landmark documentary “Shoah,” who died earlier this year at 92 — they speak directly, and steadily, explaining the various, harrowing routes taken to escape with their lives.
Presented in four discrete, non-chronological sections, “Four Sisters” begins with its longest interview, “The Hippocratic Oath,” in which Ruth Elias describes in exacting detail the many ways she narrowly evaded death, from hiding among girls she suspected would be spared for their looks, to removing her yellow star and posing as a non-Jewish Czech with no papers, to a horrifying encounter with Josef Mengele himself that left her newborn child dead.
Ada...
Presented in four discrete, non-chronological sections, “Four Sisters” begins with its longest interview, “The Hippocratic Oath,” in which Ruth Elias describes in exacting detail the many ways she narrowly evaded death, from hiding among girls she suspected would be spared for their looks, to removing her yellow star and posing as a non-Jewish Czech with no papers, to a horrifying encounter with Josef Mengele himself that left her newborn child dead.
Ada...
- 11/14/2018
- by Dave White
- The Wrap
David Frenkel on Claude Lanzmann: "He has like a sixth sense. I think that was maybe the most powerful tool when he was interviewing people during Shoah." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In the second half of my conversation with the producer of Claude Lanzmann's The Last Of The Unjust and The Four Sisters (Les Quatre Soeurs) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center during the New York Film Festival in 2017 David Frenkel shared with me some insight on Ada Lichtman in La Puce Joyeuse (The Merry Flea), Paula Biren in Baluty, Ruth Elias in Le Serment d'Hippocrate (The Hippocratic Oath), and Hanna Marton in L'arche De Noé (Noah's Ark).
The interviews of the four women were conducted by Lanzmann in the 1970s. Each one bringing to light the in-depth testimony of a remarkable woman who survived unspeakable horrors during the Third Reich. Their strength, their dignity and even joyfulness - their embrace of life,...
In the second half of my conversation with the producer of Claude Lanzmann's The Last Of The Unjust and The Four Sisters (Les Quatre Soeurs) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center during the New York Film Festival in 2017 David Frenkel shared with me some insight on Ada Lichtman in La Puce Joyeuse (The Merry Flea), Paula Biren in Baluty, Ruth Elias in Le Serment d'Hippocrate (The Hippocratic Oath), and Hanna Marton in L'arche De Noé (Noah's Ark).
The interviews of the four women were conducted by Lanzmann in the 1970s. Each one bringing to light the in-depth testimony of a remarkable woman who survived unspeakable horrors during the Third Reich. Their strength, their dignity and even joyfulness - their embrace of life,...
- 7/13/2018
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSClaude Lanzmann, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Satre, 1967. Photo via Rithy Panh.Shoah director and singular cinematic chronicler of the Holocaust, Claude Lanzmann has sadly left us. Daniel Lewis provides a comprehensive remembrance for The New York Times. Last year, we wrote on his last five films films, Napalm and The Four Sisters, a quartet of documentaries.Recommended VIEWINGEven through his perhaps more artistically compromised mainland blockbusters, we remain dedicated fans of Tsui Hark's daring, punk cinematic vision. We especially highly regard his Detective Dee films, and thus are very excited for the forthcoming Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, which has received this ecstatic new trailer.An oddly modern trailer showcasing the new gorgeous restoration of Jacques Rivette's first masterpiece (starring Anna Karina!), The Nun (1966). In a qualitative sense, Yorgos Lanthimos' films...
- 7/11/2018
- MUBI
Agreement is Arte Distribution’s first ever theatrical deal.
Source: Arte
The Four Sisters
Arte Distribution, the sales arm of pan-European broadcaster Arte, has sold North American rights to Claude Lanzmann’s holocaust survivor documentary The Four Sisters to the Cohen Media Group (Cmg).
The deal marks a first foray into theatrical film sales for Arte Distribution, which normally focuses on sales of the Arte catalogue to broadcasters and streaming platforms worldwide.
“This is actually our first theatrical deal,” Céline Payot-Lehmann, head of distribution at Arte, told Screen. “We plan indeed on taking on only a few prestigious films a year co-produced by Arte for theatrical and festival audiences.”
Payot-Lehmann negotiated the deal with John Kochman, executive vice president of Cmg.
The Four Sisters consists of a quartet or remastered films, originally intended for Lanzmann’s epic work Shoah.
It revolves around four Holocaust survivors with unique destinies, each finding herself unexpectedly and improbably alive after the end of...
Source: Arte
The Four Sisters
Arte Distribution, the sales arm of pan-European broadcaster Arte, has sold North American rights to Claude Lanzmann’s holocaust survivor documentary The Four Sisters to the Cohen Media Group (Cmg).
The deal marks a first foray into theatrical film sales for Arte Distribution, which normally focuses on sales of the Arte catalogue to broadcasters and streaming platforms worldwide.
“This is actually our first theatrical deal,” Céline Payot-Lehmann, head of distribution at Arte, told Screen. “We plan indeed on taking on only a few prestigious films a year co-produced by Arte for theatrical and festival audiences.”
Payot-Lehmann negotiated the deal with John Kochman, executive vice president of Cmg.
The Four Sisters consists of a quartet or remastered films, originally intended for Lanzmann’s epic work Shoah.
It revolves around four Holocaust survivors with unique destinies, each finding herself unexpectedly and improbably alive after the end of...
- 2/1/2018
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
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