ALL I HAD WAS NOTHINGNESS

(Je n’avais que le néant: SHOAH par Claude Lanzmann)

West Coast Premiere | France | 2025 | Documentary | 94 min | In English

Directed by: Guillaume Ribot
Written by: Guillaume Ribot
Produced by: Estelle Fialon (Les Films du Poisson), Dominique Lanzmann (Les Films Aleph)
Cinematography: Guillaume Ribot, Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg, William Lubtchansky
Film Editing: Guillaume Ribot
Cast: Claude Lanzmann, Claude Ribot (narrator)
International Sales: mk2
US Distributor: Janus Films
US Release date: TBA

Synopsis

Forty years after the release of Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour masterpiece Shoah, Guillaume Ribot uses outtakes from that groundbreaking film, and a voiceover in the director’s own words, to recount his relentless pursuit of truth in a quest to capture the concrete reality of the Holocaust. In doing so, Ribot reveals the enormous emotional, physical and financial toll that 12-year odyssey took on Lanzmann, as he crisscrossed the globe, tracking down survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators alike. Yet, in the master’s own words, “The act of transmitting is all that matters.”

Director’s biography

Photojournalist Guillaume Ribot has been preoccupied with the representation of memory throughout his career, exploring that notion via his photo exhibitions, books and documentary films. His photos have been published internationally (in Time, Paris-Match, Le Monde, The New York Times, etc.) and exhibited in museums worldwide. The catalyst for his first documentary, Le Cahier de Susi (2013), was the notebook of an 11-year-old Jewish girl his grandmother hid during WWII. Treblinka, je suis le dernier Juif (2016) recounts the daily life of a sonderkommando at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. The Black Book (2019), focuses on Russian writings documenting the destruction of Jews in Nazi-occupied Soviet territories. Moissons sanglantes (2023) retraces journalist Gareth Jones’s journey to Ukraine during the great famine of 1932. All I Had Was Nothingness premiered in this year’s Berlin Film Festival and won the Best Documentary Award at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.