Marcel Ophuls

I think of Marcel Ophuls as the greatest war-time documentarist ever. What he accomplished with his two WWII films The Sorrow And The Pity (1969) and Hotel Terminus (1988) goes beyond filmmaking and stands as a testament on human history. Another crystal clear aspect of these documentaries is Ophuls absolute mastery in the tricky art of inquiry, his irony is always pungent and with just two or three questions he reaches the heart of the matter.

The Sorrow And The Pity is about resistance and collaborationism in Vichy France (the french government supporting the German-Italian-Japanese Axis from 1940 to 1944).

Hotel Terminus, winner of the 1988 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, tells the story of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and of the people who opposed him.