Review of Filmmakers for the Prosecution

Good documentary about the production of the films screened in the Nuremberg war crime trials as evidence against Nazi officials, and about the two feature documentaries about the judgment itself, the one by Stuart Schulberg, "Nürnberg: its lesson for today", and the rival Soviet one by Roman Karmen and Elizaveta Svilova, "People's Trial", called in TMDB/Letterboxd as Nuremberg Trials. It describes step by step the evolution of the research of Nazi hidden films, and political and bureaucratic difficulties imposed to the production of the films by Stuart's brother Budd Schulberg and produced by John Ford for screening in Nuremberg, and particularly the several constraints imposed to Stuart's making-off movie with the court's footage, from filming moment until the lack of screening in the United States after the release in Stuttgart. Besides that, the documentary also brings a selection of very important, interesting and often hideous footage. One interviewee, Sandra Schulberg, daughter of Stuart Schulberg, has a quote that I consider a major lesson usually ignored when it comes to fascism, racism and bigotry: "One of the big battles that took place was whether the film should be made just for German audience or whether it should be made for international audience. The people in Berlin, with military government, really felt that it primarily should be used as a de-Nazification, a re-education tool. They wanted to show the difference between Nazi justice and Ally justice. Stuart Schulberg really felt [...] that they were making a film that was not just for Germany. They felt that the Nuremberg trial was a milestone in history of civilization, and that the whole world needed to learn lessons of Nuremberg, not just the German public." Censorship against the film in the United States just two years after the trials was the first evidence that the major lesson has not been learned at all.