KZ

Year: 2006
UK: Shooting People Films
Cast - Guides: Harald Brachner, Florian Panhölzl, Michael Gstöttenmayr, Florian Lengwin, Klemens Knopp
Tour Guides: Sylvia Mayer-Pranzeneder, Casimir Paltinger, Birgit Lang, Kurt Valtl
Mauthauseners: Sabine Reiter, Erich Dietel, Andrea Dietel, Martin Hagenmeyer, Maria Raffetseder, Rosa Falzberger, Leopold Hablig, Claudia Aichinger, Johann Thomayr, Walter Zauner, Josef Spindler, Zäzilia Furst, Johann Furst, Klaus Reiter
Visitors: Herta Feucht, Gideon Madanes, Edna Madanes, Lukas Kasalicka, Zdena Kasalicka, Eliot Sekuler, Veronika Wittman, Harry Garuba, Paval Palinkas, The Nushi Family, The Piskin Family, Caz Thomas, Sam Muradzikwa
Director: Rex Bloomstein
Country: UK
Languages: German / English (partial English subtitles)
UK: 98 mins
UK Certificate: 12 contains graphic references to wartime atrocities
UK Release Date: 20 October 2006 (Limited Release - London, ICA)

ICA

Synopsis

When the story of the unspeakable has been told a thousand times, when the images of the unimaginable have been shown a thousand times, when the mind is numb - where do you go from there? You have to start anew...

That is where this film begins.

On the banks of the river Danube, surrounded by the beautiful landscape of Upper Austria, lies the picturesque town of Mauthausen. Two kilometers from its town centre is a place that attracts bikers, busloads of tourists, parties of schoolchildren, people from all over the world.

Tour guides come to work here every day, while nearby the locals go about their daily lives. This is a place where thousands upon thousands of people from over 30 nations were tortured and murdered. This site is the former KZ, German short for concentration camp.

How does it feel to be a tourist at a former concentration camp?
How does it feel to work here as a guide, day in day out?
How does it feel to live here as a local with the dark secrets of the past?
And what of those who've chosen this town to be their new home?

This is a groundbreaking film about facing our ultimate demons. It is a contemporary yet timeless piece on the horrors that we have and always will be able to inflict on one another.

Stripped of the usual dramatic devices, survivor testimonies and archive footage this radical film shows nothing but says everything.

It will shake you to the core.