On 15 April 1945, British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on the Lüneburg Heath. A camera crew filmed images of piles of corpses and emaciated inmates which provided shocking evidence of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime. London-based producer Sidney Bernstein planned to use this material alongside other allied footage to make a film that would prove the scale of the Nazi’s extermination policy and thus provide support for the allies’ psychological offensive against Germany. Alfred Hitchcock was asked to edit the film. But after the war ended, the occupying forces changed their policy: instead of confronting the Germans with their guilt it was considered more important to instil new confidence to meet the challenges of post-was reconstruction. And so these authentic scenes of unspeakable horror were consigned to the archives ...
Night Will Fall retraces the story of this unfinished film which for decades was known as ‘the missing Hitchcock’. Parallel to the screening of this documentary, the Forum section will present the premiere of the film which has been reconstructed by the Imperial War Museum in London in accordance with Hitchcock’s intentions.