New to DVD this week: WHAT OUR FATHERS DID: A NAZI LEGACY
David Evans’ profile of the sons of high-ranking Nazis made its debut at Tribeca last year. It also screened at the Jerusalem, Vancouver, Hamburg, London, Stockholm, and San Francisco Jewish film fests.
Evans’ film focuses on three men: Niklas Frank and Horst von Wachter, both sons of lawyers turned governors of Nazi-occupied territories during WWII, and Philippe Sands, a renowned international human rights attorney whose Ukrainian Jewish grandfather lost his entire family due to atrocities overseen by Frank and von Wachter’s fathers. While Frank has unreservedly condemned the actions of his father, a man who never showed him any affection before he was convicted at Nuremberg and sentenced to death, von Wachter clings to the increasingly untenable belief that his beloved father was a good man, not responsible for any war crimes. In settings both private and public, Sands and Frank challenge von Wachter to face facts, but continue to face disturbing resistance, facile excuses, and impossible demands for corroboration, making for a troubling and compelling consideration of the limits of denial.
what (not) to doc 