''Austerlitz'' is a 2016 German

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

written and directed by

Sergei Loznitsa Sergei Vladimirovich Loznitsa ( be, Сяргей Уладзіміравіч Лазніца, russian: Сергей Владимирович Лозница, uk, Сергій Володимирович Лозниця; born 5 September 1964) is a Uk ...

. It premiered out of competition at the 73rd edition of the

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...

. It deals with the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

by observing visitors at the

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

and

Dachau , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

. The title is a hint at

W.G. Sebald Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by literary critics as one of the g ...

's ''Austerlitz'' novel.

Reception

Critical response

''Austerlitz'' has an approval rating of 91% on

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, based on 11 reviews, and an average rating of 6.83/10.

References

External links

* 2016 films 2016 documentary films German documentary films Documentary films about the Holocaust Films directed by Sergei Loznitsa German prison films 2010s German films {{hist-documentary-film-stub