Forty years after Claude Lanzmann’s monumental 9-hour film Shoah reshaped how the world remembers the Holocaust, filmmaker Guillaume Ribot returned to Lanzmann’s original materials and created a profound and riveting documentary all his own. A surprisingly propulsive and suspenseful film, All I Had Was Nothingness draws on 220 hours of previously unseen outtake film footage Lanzmann shot in the 1970s, recently digitized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Ribot revisits Lanzmann’s 12-year odyssey, providing a fuller picture of the personal, ethical, logistical, and financial strain behind the monumental work.

As Shoah joins UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, Ribot’s film emerges as both a tribute to Lanzmann’s lifelong mission to preserve the voices of those who endured humanity’s darkest chapter, and an essential stand-alone work of art that deepens our understanding of how one filmmaker’s tireless pursuit reshaped collective remembrance of the Holocaust.

More than a “making-of” documentary, All I Had Was Nothingness stands as a moving meditation on memory, testimony, and the power of cinema to confront history. (Print source: National Center for Jewish Film)

Post-film discussion with Simon Sibelman, Professor Emeritus of French and Holocaust Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and former Executive Director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum

Winner – Best Documentary, UK Jewish Film Festival

Directed by Guillaume Ribot | France | Documentary | 2025 | French, Polish, English, Hebrew, German with English subtitles | 94 minutes

Subjects: Biographies, Cinema Studies, History, Holocaust & WWII, Social Justice

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