home All News open_in_new Full Article

What They Found review – Sam Mendes’s debut documentary has the power to change viewers for ever

This tale of two British army sergeants who filmed the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp uses their profoundly disturbing footage. It’s TV that could alter your whole world viewWhat They Found, the first documentary by the film and theatre director Sam Mendes, is a short, stark shock. The film straightforwardly combines two precious artefacts held at the Imperial War Museum in London: 35mm film, shot by Sgt Mike Lewis and Sgt Bill Lawrie of the British Army Film and Photographic Unit, before and during the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near the town of Celle in northern Germany in April 1945; and audio interviews given by the cameramen in the 1980s. Lewis and Lawrie did not record sound when they visited Belsen; the words they spoke years later are the only sounds we hear.Lewis and Lawrie do not arrive at Belsen until almost halfway through the film’s 36-minute running time. First, laid over generic archive footage, we hear how they came to be a...


today 7 h. ago attach_file Politics

attach_file Politics
attach_file Politics
attach_file Politics
attach_file Culture
attach_file Politics
attach_file Culture
attach_file Events
attach_file Politics
attach_file Politics


ID: 3765047458
Add Watch Country

arrow_drop_down