Director Peter Bebjak on the scene (source: Sme)
To find a novel approach to the Holocaust is definitely a challenge, and yet director Peter Bebjak has told an unfamiliar but revealing story in The Auschwitz Report, Slovakia’s submission for the best international film of 2020.
This is praise indeed from the Hollywood Reporter magazine found in a review of a Slovak film about Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, two Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 and wrote a report about the mass slaughter that was ongoing there.
“Like the Oscar-winning Son of Saul and some other graphic Holocaust movies, The Auschwitz Report can be difficult to watch,” Hollywood Reporter wrote. “But there is no question that it is an extremely well-crafted piece of work.”
Slovak candidates for Oscars
The website describes that we see enough of the rituals of the camp and the brutality of the commanders to understand the nightmare, but the film mostly means to honour the determination of these two prisoners who persisted in order to tell their story.
“This harrowing but well-made film reminds us of the importance of giving testimony to atrocity and injustice, a theme that retains its relevance in our troubling new century marked by a rise in authoritarian regimes around the world,” Hollywood Reporter summed up.
Slovakia has sent The Report to the Oscars, where it will compete for a best foreign language film nomination. The film will be screened throughout the United States.
“I think that we must create more films that remind us that, as humanity and a community, we have absolutely failed and have allowed people to deny basic human rights and persecute their citizens, whether for their religion, sexual orientation or free expression of their opinions,“ said director Peter Bebjak in an interview with Sme daily.
