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On November 20, 1945, in Nuremberg, Germany, once prime real estate for torchlit Nazi pageantry, currently reduced to ruins by Allied bombing, the International Military Tribunal, an unprecedented experiment in transnational jurisprudence, convened in the city’s Palace of Justice, one of the few buildings left standing. The four victorious powers — the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — had hauled the loser, Nazi Germany, before four judges and a global jury to be held accountable for violating a series of recently devised additions to the criminal code — crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, criminal conspiracy, and war crimes.

Twenty-one Nazi leaders were in the dock, defendants whose names most Americans had become familiar with in the years since 1933. The accused included Reich Marshall Herman Göring, Hitler’s brutal second in command; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who in August 1939 negotiated the pact with the Soviet Union that ignited the conflagration; Rudolf Hess,...

"The written word was absolutely inadequate to describe what had happened." Kino Lorber has revealed an official US trailer for a documentary film called Filmmakers for the Prosecution, made by French journalist / filmmaker Jean-Christophe Klotz. Originally made to air on Arte TV in France, the doc will be playing in NYC's Dctv Firehouse Cinema later this month - for "Holocaust Day of Remembrance". Adapted from Sandra Schulberg's monograph, the documentary retraces the thrilling hunt for film evidence used to convict the Nazis at the first Nuremberg Trial. In four months of high-risk investigation across devastated Europe, the Schulbergs manage to save hundreds of hours of footage, much of it taken by the Nazis, from destruction. Their editing team then worked tirelessly to complete a "film" before the opening of the trial on November 21, 1945. This was then presented during the trial to showcase actual footage from the Nazis themselves to convict them.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the power of film to convey an idea or feeling is simply boundless. Filmmakers for the Prosecution, a new documentary directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz and produced by Sandra Schulberg, examines the search for celluloid to convict the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. Ahead of the film’s opening on Holocaust Day of Remembrance, January 27, in New York at the Dctv Firehouse Cinema courtesy of Kino Lorber, we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the first trailer.

Adapted from Sandra Schulberg’s monograph, the documentary retraces the thrilling hunt for film evidence used to convict the Nazis at the first Nuremberg Trial. The searchers were two sons of Hollywood––brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg––serving under the command of Oss film chief John Ford. The motion pictures they presented in the courtroom became part of the official record and shape our understanding of the Holocaust to this day.