Night and Fog (French: Nuit et brouillard)
is a 1955 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made
ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The documentary
features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz
and Majdanek while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and
Fog was made in collaboration by two survivors of the Holocaust, including
writer Jean Cayrol and composer Hanns Eisler.
Resnais was originally hesitant about
making the film and refused the offer to make it until Cayrol was contracted to
write the script. The film was shot entirely in the year 1955 and is composed
of contemporary shots of the camps and stock footage. Resnais and Cayrol found
the film very difficult to make due to its graphic nature and subject matter.
The film faced difficulties with French censors unhappy with a shot of a French
police officer in the film, and with the German embassy in France
