The Memory of Justice

A monumental account of the Nuremberg Trials and their consequences. The questions permeating the film are both simple and complex: how is it possible to judge the behaviour of a nation or of an individual? Is the judgement of a victorious nation over a defeated one inevitably hypocritical? And did America's atrocities in Vietnam damage the moral high-ground the country acquired at the Nuremberg trials? For the director it is about pinning down attitudes, concepts and perspectives. Marcel Ophüls, who this year is being awarded the Berlinale Camera, is one of the most important documentarians of the 20th century. He is a master of purposeful digression: he makes the simple complex and the complex simple – often in almost painful synchronicity.
The Memory of Justice screened at the Berlinale in 1978 and was later thought for a long time to have been lost. The film has been painstakingly restored by the Academy Film Archive in association with Paramount Pictues and The Film Foundation, with support from the Material World Charitable Foundation, Righteous Persons Foundation, and The Film Foundation.