The film is concerned chiefly with four topics: Chełmno, where mobile gas vans were first used by Germans to exterminate Jews; the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau; and the Warsaw Ghetto, with testimonies from survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators.
En 2008, Mike Campbell – l’un des derniers fermiers blancs au Zimbabwe face au violent programme de réforme agraire – prend le risque sans précédent d’attaquer le Président Robert Mugabe devant le tribunal du SADC (Communauté de Développement Sud-Africain) afin de défendre ses droits. Son exploitation agricole emploie plus de 500 travailleurs et abrite également leurs familles. Mike Campbell accuse Mugabe et son gouvernement de discrimination raciale et de violation des Droits de l’Homme. Embarqués dans un procès hors du commun, Mike et sa famille vont devoir faire face à la violence et à la cruauté du régime du dictateur. Ce documentaire retrace leur combat.
The film opens with a note that the following is "a reminder that behind the curtain of Nazi pageants and parades was millions of men, women and children who were tortured to death - the greatest mass murder in human history," then fades into German civilians at Gardelegen carrying crosses to the local concentration camp.
The film exhibits a series of sculptures, masks and other traditional art from Sub-Saharan Africa. The images are frequently set to music and cut to the music's pace. The narrator focuses on the emotional qualities of the objects, and discusses the perception of African sculptures from a historical and contemporary European perspective. Only occasionally does the film provide the geographical origin, time period or other contextual information about the objects. The idea of a dead statue is explained as a statue which has lost its original significance and become reduced to a museum object, similarly to a dead person who can be found in history books. Interweaved with the objects are a few scenes of Africans performing traditional music and dances, as well as the death of a disemboweled gorilla.
Night and Fog is a documentary that alternates between past and present and features both black-and-white and color footage. The first part of Night and Fog shows remnants of Auschwitz while the narrator Michel Bouquet describes the rise of Nazi ideology. The film continues with comparisons of the life of the Schutzstaffel to the starving prisoners in the camps. Bouquet then addresses the sadism inflicted upon the doomed inmates, including torture, scientific and medical "experiments", executions, and prostitution. The next section is shown completely in black-and-white, and depicts images of gas chambers and piles of bodies. The final topic of the film depicts the liberation of the country, the discovery of the horror of the camps, and the questioning of who was responsible for them.
Part One of the film, The Collapse, has an extended interview with Pierre Mendès France. He was jailed by the Vichy government on charges of desertion, but escaped from jail to join Charles de Gaulle's forces operating out of England, and later served as Prime Minister of liberated France.
Le film propose une sélection des actualités du régime de Vichy (d'août 1940 à août 1944) montée de manière chronologique. Aucun commentaire ne les accompagne. Le film « n'en a pas besoin », comme l'a expliqué Chabrol lors de la présentation de son travail.
En 1998, Habib Ould Mohamed dit Pipo est tué alors qu'il tente de voler une voiture. Le documentaire retrace les événements de cette fin d'année à Toulouse à travers trois habitants de la cité du Mirail.
In 1994, between April and July, the massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus left one million dead. Instigated by Fest’Africa, a dozen African authors met four years after the events as writers in residence at Kigali, to try to break the silence of African intellectuals on this genocide.
Les 12 hommes qui ont quitté Bloemfontein ont abandonné l’Afrique du Sud en 1960 pour faire prendre conscience à l’étranger de la réalité du Congrès national africain (ANC). Parmi eux se trouvait Benjamin Pule Leinaeng, le beau-père du réalisateur. À son enterrement à Bloemfontein, Harris découvre l’extrême courage de cet homme. Ce film est une acceptation posthume de la paternité de Leinaeng et un hommage aux douze hommes qui ont sacrifié leur propre vie pour la liberté de leur pays.
The advance publicity booklet on the film when it was entitled "Africa Sings", touted it as showing "what the white man achieved for himself" and "what he has done for he natives." "Africa Sings" was one of the first documentary films from South Africa to take a look at the lives of South Africans of all races. There are images of location life, schools and colleges, and a cross-section of occupations, from mine-workers to road-gangs, school-teachers to house- servants, waiters to cane-cutters. Mainstream reviewers gave the documentary a tepid response; the London Daily Worker thought it was too bland to serve a staunch liberationist purpose.