Nuit et brouillard / Night and Fog

Night and Fog is a 1955 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The title is taken from the Nacht und Nebel program of abductions and disappearances decreed by Nazi Germany. The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek established in occupied Poland while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was made in collaboration with scriptwriter Jean Cayrol, a survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. The film was shot entirely in the year 1955 and is composed of contemporary shots of the camps plus stock footage. Resnais and Cayrol found the film very difficult to make due to its graphic nature and subject matter relating to the atrocities of the Holocaust. The film faced difficulties with French censors unhappy with a shot of a French police officer in the film, and with the German embassy in France, which attempted to halt the film's release at the Cannes Film Festival. Night and Fog was nevertheless released in Cannes in 1956 to critical acclaim, and still receives very high praise today.