In the spring, the Memorial opens its doors to the second edition of a festival of short films on the history and memory of the Shoah, the Second World War, and other genocides of the 20th century.
If it is defined by its duration, the short film is also defined by its freedom of form, background and point of view. Our Festival exposes the diversity of short film scripts: documentary, animation, fiction, experimental, etc. These various forms are called upon for the very particular way in which they have been able to represent, to stage and keep the memorial imprint of tragic events over the years.
The short film festival takes place over two days: Sunday, April 19 and Sunday, May 3.
Sunday, April 19, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
14:30 – Session 1
2012, digital, 22 min.
Jeanne is a survivor of a massacre on the hill of Nyanza, during the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. She never returned to the place where she had been left for dead. Since then, this place has remained within her, while there it has continued to evolve autonomously. Listening to his words, the film connects his testimony and the transformed landscape, weaving a link between intimate memory and territory.
1988, 16 mm, 5 min 05.
Inspired by a quote from the documentary, Elie Wiesel’s
2019, digital, 30 min.
A woman wanders, stunned, in the deserted ruins of what was once a village. From these ravaged places emerge the terrible images of an organized killing, intertwined with the sweet memories of familiar times, before the horror. Nourished by the childhood memories of the survivor, Robert Hébras, the film pays tribute to the victims of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre: on 10 July 1944, the SS "Das Reich" division methodically set fire to this village in Haute-Vienne and killed 642 of its inhabitants.
16:30 – Session 2
2019, digital, 17 min 22.
La Biche morte,
1980, 16 mm, 10 min.
The affinities between long-exposure night photographs, sequences of bombings from the Second World War and electrical storms weave a visual dream. Through the use of found footage, a young boy’s nocturnal games are transformed into an evocation of combat and aerial bombardment, provoking a diffuse and deep emotion.
1989, 16 mm, 6 min.
In the Berlin of the Weimar Republic, the nightlife of a cabaret celebrates freedom and jazz. But the irruption of a man wearing the swastika suddenly breaks this effervescence. Artists, lovers and Jews are arrested and taken to the camps. In an animation style reminiscent of expressionist painting, the film meditates on the abrupt end of the flourishing queer scene of Weimar Germany, under the growing shadow of Nazism.
2023, numeric, 14 min 23.
In the sea, Alfred Nakache swims. As he progresses, memories come to the surface: from his childhood in North Africa to his glory as world champion in butterfly swimming, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps to the dreamy beaches of Réunion, all are linked to water. This story tells of his last swim. He ends up disappearing into the infinite blue of the sea, joining the ephemeral image of his lost family.
In the presence of
Distribution of films by filmmakers,
Sunday, May 3, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
14:30 – Session 1
2022, 22 min 34.
Rosine Crémieux, a French psychoanalyst, became involved in the Resistance against the Nazis and was deported to Ravensbrück. In parallel with her book,
2023, 4 min 43.
From 1943 to 1946, more than 20,000 women accused of collaboration with the Germans were sheared in France. Through a montage of archival footage shot by American soldiers and amateur filmmakers, the film confronts us with this public and social humiliation, in resonance with Paul Éluard’s poem
2025, 10 min.
On 16 July 1945, Klara Schwartz Adler, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, returned to Paris. Using passages from the novel,
1980, 45 min.
As part of the television series
16:30 – Session 2
2022, 15 min.
Between 1941 and 1944, more than 60,000 letters of deportees from France were addressed to their relatives. If hunger and food parcels occupy a central place, they also evoke rumors, improvised concerts, reunions and the lack of privacy. Through five letters, accompanied by contemplative images, the film plunges into the daily life of French transit camps, notably that of Drancy. Bitterness, anxiety, hope, exhaustion and dread intertwine letter after letter, always revealing a deep humanity.
1999, 25 min.
"Mom, what do you remember from the march?" From 1984 to 1997, Abraham Ravett asked his mother, a survivor of the death marches, the same question. She remembers her survival, this miracle, and recounts her experience. Over time, the camera records the complexity of his responses, his emotion intact, and draws a portrait of the aging of a mother and her memories.
2025, 25 min 23.
Mamie Judith, a child hiding in Switzerland, was only 5 years old when her father, Naftalie, was murdered at Auschwitz. She wasn’t talking about the future, as if everything had been erased or stopped. As her granddaughter discovers the last letter her father wrote to her, Judith confides a particular secret. They go together on a tour around Jewish Alsace. Little by little, their journey brings back Naftalie.
1981, 10 min.
In 1944, a hundred Gypsies, men and women separated from their children, are locked up in a hangar and await death under the care of the Nazis. Defying their fate, they start to sing and dance, thus asserting their identity. The music then becomes an act of resistance and a cry for freedom.
In the presence of
Programming designed by Julie Maeck, Louise Gurman Dessauce, Pomi Ahn.
Standard rate: €5
Reduced rate: 3 years for 18-25 year olds and seniors (upon presentation of proof)
Free rate for job seekers, students and 18-year-olds (upon presentation of supporting documents)
