1975. In Rome, Claude Lanzmann films Benjamin Murmelstein, the last president of the Jewish Council of the Jewish ghetto Theresienstadt, “the city that was given to the Jews by Hitler” and a “model ghetto”. Murmelstein was the only “Elder of the Jews” who was not killed in the war. A rabbi in Vienna, Murmelstein, after Germany was annexed by Germany in 1938, fought week after week with Adolf Eichmann, in the end managing to ensure that 121,000 Jews were able to emigrate and that the people of the ghetto were not completely exterminated. As a result, he became a very controversial figure within the Jewish community, which accused him of bargaining for lives. Lanzmann sets these old interviews against Theresienstadt today, offering insight into the birthplace of the “Final Solution”.

In the wake of his 10-hour masterpiece, Shoah, Claude Lanzmann sits the audience down for 3:40 hours of footage of an extraordinary man who is both fascinating and troubling. Presented out of competition at Cannes in 2013, The Last of the Unjust is dense, strong and brutal, questioning memory, guilt, morality and the place of mankind within a nightmare of a machine. An unusual and ambiguous person, Benjamin Murmelstein takes over the whole film, a long and difficult experience that is nonetheless important and valuable.