Documentary Review Filmmakers for the Prosecution

Filmmakers for the Prosecution (2023) 

Directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz 

Written by Documentary 

Release Date January 27th, 2023 

Published January 28th, 2023 

Filmmakers for the Prosecution is a riveting and necessary documentary. The doc captures the remarkable role that filmmakers played in the prosecution of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg in 1945-46. The legendary filmmaking family, the Schulberg's were on the front line of the final days of World War 2 as Americans and Russians made their way into the heart of Berlin and the end of the Nazi regime. Along the way, those filmmakers captured images that have lasted for decades, seered into the collective memory that is world history. 

Filmmakers for the Prosecution begins on Bud Schulberg, a stalwart of the studio system whose family was deeply affected by the holocaust. Schulberg committed his vast resources and influence in Hollywood to helping the war effort. It was the Schulberg family who recruited director John Ford to be in Europe helping to oversee the effort of filming and cataloguing the Nazi atrocities. Those films would go on to be essential to prosecuting Nazi War criminals including Rudolf Hess and Herman Goering. 

Act 2 of Filmmakers for the Prosecution then turns to the efforts of recovering the films made by the Nazis themselves. For reasons that can only be attributed to insane hubris, the Nazis filmed their horrific crimes. Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's own film director enters the story briefly as she helps the Americans find some of the most shocking footage in world history. This footage, which you will see in Filmmakers for the Prosecution, shows Nazi soldiers bulldozing the bodies of Jewish prisoners into improvised graves. 

Find my review at Swamp.Media linked here.