News

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...

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,...

‪Claude Lanzmann‬'s Les Quatre Soeurs (The Four Sisters) clockwise from top left - Ruth Elias in Le Serment d'Hippocrate (The Hippocratic Oath); Hanna Marton in L'arche De Noé (Noah's Ark); Ada Lichtman in La Puce Joyeuse (The Merry Flea); Paula Biren in Baluty

During the 55th New York Film Festival in 2017, Claude Lanzmann presented the World Premiere of The Four Sisters (Les Quatre Soeurs) in the Special Events programme. At Lincoln Center prior to the public screenings, I spoke with David Frenkel, the producer of the four films, edited by Chantal Hymans. Frenkel is also a producer for The Last of the Unjust with Jean Labadie, Kurt Stocker, and Danny Krausz (Maria Schrader's Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe).

‪David Frenkel‬: "What's great working with Claude is that he always surprises you. It was the same with The Last of the Unjust and Benjamin Murmelstein. He was so striking.

‪Claude Lanzmann‬ Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Claude Lanzmann, the director of the documentaries Shoah, The Last Of The Unjust, Napalm, and The Four Sisters (Les Quatre Soeurs) passed away in Paris on the morning of July 5, 2018.

During last year's New York Film Festival Claude Lanzmann and I had a brief exchange at Lincoln Center when he was presenting The Four Sisters (Les Quatre Soeurs). He had heard earlier from his producer David Frenkel, with whom I had an in-depth conversation on the films, how deeply moved I was. Lanzmann walked up to me and gave me a big hug before he introduced The Hippocratic Oath (Le Serment d'Hippocrate), his unforgettable documentary on Ruth Elias.

Arnaud Desplechin sent the following tribute (translated below) from Paris in honour of Claude Lanzmann:-

"Ce matin, mon maitre est mort. Si je suis devenu le spectateur que je suis, c’est à la suite de la première sortie en.

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...

The Four Sisters: The Hippocratic OathIn a review of Claude Lanzmann’s memoir, Adam Shatz observes that “self-flattery is characteristically Lanzmannian.” This sort of self-regard often manifests itself in interviews that the filmmaker grants to journalists and proved grating indeed in Napalm, a Lanzmann documentary screened as a “Special Presentation” at Cannes in 2017. During a recent trip to North Korea enshrined in Napalm—which offers a cursory look at the historical roots of the hermit kingdom’s totalitarian impulses—Lanzmann emerges as considerably more preoccupied with celebrating his youthful dalliance with a North Korean nurse during an earlier visit in the 1950s as a member of a leftist delegation. With Lanzmann, however, it’s often necessary to swallow a little of his self-aggrandizement in order to appreciate his genuine accomplishments. Contradictions abound inasmuch as his best work, such as the magisterial Shoah, is both formally audacious and historically focused while a minor work like Tsahal,...

This year’s New York Film Festival has just unveiled a slew of Special Events to round out its already full-to-bursting lineup, and it includes some late-breaking entries to previously announced sections and a selection of brand new events that are very special indeed. Highlights include a trio of documentary premieres, including Susan Lacy’s “Spielberg” (focused on the eponymous director, with both Lacy and her subject set to appear at the festival), along with Jennifer Lebeau’s Bob Dylan concert film “Trouble No More,” and Susan Froemke’s “The Opera House,” a history of the Metropolitan Opera and a love letter to the art form that will (appropriately enough) screen at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.

Other standouts include four brand-new films from Claude Lanzmann, a sparkling new restoration of G.W. Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box.” Elsewhere, Kate Winslet will be on hand for a career-spanning chat...