| The Last Days | |
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| Directed by | James Moll |
| Produced by | June Beallor Kenneth Lipper |
| Music by | Hans Zimmer |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | October Films |
Release dates |
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Running time | 87 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Languages | English, German and Hungarian |
The Last Days is a 1998 Americandocumentary film directed byJames Moll and produced by June Beallor andKenneth Lipper;Steven Spielberg, in his role as founder of theShoah Foundation, was one of the film'sexecutive producers. The film tells the stories of fiveHungarian Jews duringthe Holocaust (also known as the Shoah), focusing on the last year ofWorld War II, whenNazi Germanyoccupied Hungary and beganmass deportations of Jews in the country toconcentration andextermination camps, primarilyAuschwitz. It depicts the horrors of life in the camps, but also stresses the optimism and perseverance of the survivors.[1][2]
The film won theAcademy Award forBest Documentary Feature at the71st Academy Awards.[1][3] It was remastered and re-released onNetflix on May 19, 2021.[1]
The film includes archival footage, photographs, and documents, as well as new interviews with Holocaust survivors Bill Basch,Irene Zisblatt,Renée Firestone,Alice Lok Cahana,Tom Lantos,Randolph Braham, andDario Gabbai.[1] The filmmakers take the first five of those, who all immigrated to the United States after WWII, back to visit their hometowns and the sites of the camps to which they were sent. FormerRepresentative Lantos (D-CA) was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to theUnited States Congress.[4][5] He was saved by Swedish diplomatRaoul Wallenberg, who hid Lantos inBudapest.[4]
There are also interviews withU.S. army veteransPaul Parks and Katsugo Miho,G.I.'s who helped liberateDachau concentration camp. FormerSS doctorHans Münch, who wasacquitted ofwar crimes at theNuremberg trials, is interviewed about his experiences atAuschwitz concentration camp.[2][4]
The Last Days was first released in 1998, and it was remastered and re-released worldwide onNetflix on May 19, 2021. It was produced by June Beallor,Kenneth Lipper,Steven Spielberg, and theSurvivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.[citation needed]
The Last Days received positive reviews from film critics. It holds a 92% approval rating onreview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, based on 24 reviews.[6] OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 85 out of 100, based on 25 critics.[7]
According to Radheyan Simonpillai ofThe Guardian: "The film’s thesis is that theNazis were so fueled by hatred that they would sacrifice their position in the war in order to carry out thegenocide, deporting 438,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz within a six-week period."[1]Roger Ebert wrote for theChicago Sun-Times that the film "focuses on the last year of the war, whenAdolf Hitler, already defeated and with his resources running out, revealed the depth of his racial hatred by diverting men and supplies to the task of exterminating Hungary's Jews."[8] InNew York Magazine,John Leonard wrote: "It is a story told by five survivors of that fast-forward genocide, all of themnaturalized American citizens, who return to the cities and villages from which they were seized, and to the camps to which they were committed."[4]
Marc Savlov ofThe Austin Chronicle wrote: "Moll's film is a far cry from the elegiac poetry of, say,Night and Fog; it's a document more than an examination, and its power of record is inarguable and incorruptible."[2] Barbara Shulgasser-Parker, former film critic for theSan Francisco Examiner, wrote forCommon Sense Media that "The horrors described by survivors of the death camps, the soldiers who liberated them, and historians, as well as photographs and archival footage, make this important and educational but best suited to teens and older."[9]
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