‘The Investigation’ Film on Nazi Atrocities

On Oct. 19, 1965, shortly after the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial — the first trial of Germans by Germans for the crimes of the Holocaust — playwright Peter Weiss premiered The Investigation. The play drew on the verbatim testimony of SS officers, Nazi functionaries, and camp survivors, to reconstruct the genocidal horror in harrowing, undeniable detail.

Eschewing depictions of the camp itself, The Investigation relies on the words of the perpetrators and their victims to lay bare the greatest crime of the 20th century.

On January 27, 2025, 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, the first film adaptation of The Investigation will premiere in Israel. RP Kahl’s faithful, four-hour-long recreation will screen at the Cinematheque Tel Aviv on Monday and at the Cinematheque Jerusalem on Tuesday, Jan. 28.

“Showing the film in Israel, particularly in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, is deeply meaningful to us,” says The Investigation producer Alexander van Dülmen. “The film’s timelessness and educational value make it a unique contribution to Holocaust remembrance worldwide.”

Dülmen, whose producer credits include Cloud Atlas from Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings, Sophie Barthes’ Madame Bovary, and Pepe Danquart’s Holocaust survivor tale Run Boy Run, decided to adapt The Investigation after re-reading the play during COVID and realizing “that there are now almost no living witnesses [to the Holocaust]. One of my personal concerns is the tendency, particularly in Germany, to focus too much in films on the perpetrators, not the victims, like in Downfall or the recent Wannsee Conference adaptation. The craftsmanship in these films is impeccable, but the focus often ends up on the psychology of the perpetrators. [The Investigation] lays bare the crimes of the Nazis. There’s no need to delve into whether this man’s mother was evil or this one’s father beat him; These were simply criminals, murderers.”

The rise in right-wing extremism — not least in Germany, where the far-right AfD party is running second in the polls — gives The Investigation a current relevance, but director RP Kahl says current politics was not on his mind.

“Anti-Semitism has always existed, and while its visibility might be more shocking now, the struggle of a liberal society, the struggle of freedom versus the oppression represented by Auschwitz, is timeless,” he says.

“Remembrance and education are critical for combating anti-Semitism and racism,” says von Dülmen, “but this film is about individual moral choices—both in the past and today. The prosecutor in the play repeatedly asks: ‘You had a choice; why did you take this path?’ It’s a question that applies to many aspects of life, not just politics. For me, [this film] is less about using the past to counter current far-right movements and more about preserving what we’ve built over the last 80 years: Democracy, freedom, and human rights.”

For audiences accustomed to a more emotional depiction of the horrors of the camps, The Investigation may come as a shock. Kahl replicates Weiss’ theatrical approach in the film, stripping out dramatic plotting and any overt emotion from the performances — including those of Tom Wlaschiha (Game of Thrones), Karl Markovics (The Counterfeiters) and Christiane Paul (In July) as witnesses for the prosecution — to let the cold facts speak from themselves.

” Overwhelming the audience with emotion can shut down critical thinking,” says Kahl, “and while emotional engagement is essential, it must be balanced with an intellectual understanding. Just feeling sad or sorry [about the Holocaust] leads nowhere. The audience needs to grasp the systemic factors that made Auschwitz possible: The totalitarian system, the terror, the erosion of humanity, and the promotion of opportunism. This active engagement allows for deeper understanding and reflection.”

In an unprecedented move, The Investigation, which was released theatrically last year, will go out in Germany today across all home entertainment platforms, including pay-TV network Sky, French-German public broadcaster ARTE, and regional networks BR and WDR. Local distributor Leonine is also beginning its physical DVD release today. The Investigation will have its official international festival release in Rotterdam later this week.

German public broadcaster ARD, one of the film’s main backers, has also created a serialized format for the film, breaking down the four-hour movie into eleven segments to make it an easier fit for television and streaming. Following its Israeli premiere, The Investigation plans to screen at Jewish film festivals worldwide and hopes to secure a U.S. streaming platform for its serialized format.