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It’s an old canard in the movie business: Never underestimate a Holocaust movie when it comes to Oscar attention. From Hungary’s Best Foreign Language winner “Son of Saul” (2016) and Oscar-winners “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961), “Cabaret” (1973), “Sophie’s Choice” (1983), and “The Pianist” (2004) to Steven Spielberg’s Best Picture winner “Schindler’s List” (1994), many Holocaust subjects, especially shorts and documentary features, have won Oscars. Documentaries like “Anne Frank Remembered” won for 1995, “The Long Way Home” for 1997, “The Last Days” for 1998, and “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” for 2000, and more recently, the nonfiction short “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life” won for 2014 — just one week after its subject, Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, passed away.

This season’s most decorated Holocaust film, “The Zone of Interest” (Metascore: 91) has multiple Oscar advantages. First, the film, which British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer adapted from the Martin Amis novel of the same name,...

Carl Davis, the composer known for his BAFTA-winning score for “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981), died of a brain hemorrhage on Thursday. He was 86.

Davis’ family issued a statement on social media, writing: “We are so proud that Carl’s legacy will be his astonishing impact on music. A consummate all-round musician, he was the driving force behind the reinvention of the silent movie for this generation and he wrote scores for some of the most loved and remembered British television dramas.”

Born in New York, Davis co-authored revue “Diversions” (1959), which won an off-Broadway Emmy and featured at the 1961 Edinburgh Festival. Davis moved to the U.K. in 1961 and was commissioned by the BBC to compose music for “That Was the Week That Was.” Subsequent work included BBC’s anthology play series “The Wednesday Play” (1964-70) and “Play for Today” (1970-84).

Davis then composed for several iconic British television shows, including...

National Geographic’s “A Small Light” takes the well known story of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who hid in a cramped Amsterdam attic with her family during the Nazi occupation, and presents it though a new lens.

The narrative focuses on a tenacious young woman, Miep Gies (Bel Powley), Otto Frank’s secretary, who risked everything to save the Frank family and many others. While the story centers around the horrors of World War II, the story finds resilience and hope through it all.

Here the artisans behind the limited series break down how their respective crafts reflect hope, resilience and the atrocities of war.

Costume design

Costume designer Matthew Simonelli wanted to pay respect to the period and region. “It had to feel 1942, but that it was taking place in Amsterdam,” Simonelli says.

The Amsterdam Museum‘s exhibit on wartime fashion was his biggest guide where he was...

National Geographic’s eight-part limited series “A Small Light” premiering May 1 tells the story of Anne Frank through the eyes of Miep Gies, the brave young woman who hid the Franks and four others in secret annex above Otto Frank’’s office in Amsterdam from the Nazis who were rounding up Jewish residents. Miep, who worked for Frank, was one of six people who took care of them. She was tasked with supplying them with meat and vegetables. Wrote Anne Frank: “Miep is just like a pack mule, she fetches and carries so much. Almost every day she manages to get hold of some vegetables for us brings everything in shopping bags on her bicycle.” Miep also brought them books.

The Nazis discovered their hiding place and on Aug. 4, 1944, they were arrested and sent to the death camps. Miep managed to save Anne’s notes and journals from the annex...

Anne Frank continues to resonate as perhaps the most famous symbol of Jewish suffering and persecution in the face of the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust during World War II. It was her teenage diary, after all, that remains perhaps the most vivid description of what it was like to live under Nazi occupation – specifically in Amsterdam between 1942 and ’44, while her family was in hiding and she wrote her famed remembrance of being sheltered out of view until a betrayal led to their being discovered.

It was a woman named Miep Gies, however, who provided a first-hand aural witness’s account of those hiding out in what came to be known as the Secret Annex. It’s her tale that’s told in “A Small Light,” a powerful eight-part limited series from NatGeo that premieres with a pair of installments on May 1 and streams the next day on Disney+. It...

Tony Sokol May 16, 2017

Kenneth Branagh is in talks to play Anne Frank’s father in Keeper Of The Diary...

Kenneth Branagh is in talks to direct and star as Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank in Fox Searchlight’s Keeper Of The Diary. The screenplay was written on spec by Sam Franco and Evan Kilgore.

Keeper Of The Diary is set after World War II Otto Frank searched for a publisher for his daughter’s Anne’s The Diary Of A Young Girl. The diary detailed her family’s experiences during the Nazi’s persecution of the Jews as they found themselves trapped in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944. Anne died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust in 1945. Anne's diary and papers were rescued by Miep Gies and delivered to her father. Otto transcribed the diaries from Dutch for relatives in Switzerland.

The historically important document was published in Europe in...