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KZ
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KZ
IDFA 2005

KZ

Rex Bloomstein
England
2005
97 min
World Premiere
Festival history
When the images of the unimaginable have been shown a thousand times, when the mind is numb - where do you go from there? You have to start anew. That is where this film begins. "It's very nice to be here," says a tourist surrounded by the beautiful landscape of Upper Austria, where he is visiting the former Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen. He wants to go to Auschwitz next. Groups of tourists and school classes are offered Mauthausen as an attraction, but once inside, their facial expressions turn to genuine horror. Down to the most atrocious details, the camp guides tell them what the prisoners went through. Still, this does not prevent some visitors from stealing the shower heads from the gas chambers as a souvenir. How does it feel to work here as a guide, day in, day out? How does it feel to live here as a local with the dark secrets of the past? And what of those who've chosen this town to be their new home? Stripped of the usual dramatic devices, survivor testimonies and conventional archival footage, this film shows present-day Mauthausen and the different generations of people who visit, live and work in a place where thousands upon thousands of people from over 30 nations were tortured and murdered.
Credits
Screening copy
    Rex Entertainment
    Rex Entertainment
World Sales
    Films Transit International Inc.
    Films Transit International Inc.