Film Grants

“Son of Saul,” a film partially funded by the Claims Conference has been nominated for an Academy Award. The film won a Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture in the Foreign Language category and the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

In movie theaters and on television screens, films bring the lessons and memory of the Holocaust to life. Recognizing the potential of film to reach large numbers of people and to educate and spark powerful discussions, the Claims Conference began in 2010 to include film grants as part of our ongoing support for Holocaust education, documentation and research.

For filmmakers: Apply for a grant

Each film highlighted below focuses on one particular aspect or story from the Holocaust, enabling viewers to connect emotionally with the victims and survivors. By learning of one family’s survival by hiding in a cave, or the triumph of a concentration camp soccer team, or the stories behind a tattooed number, even a viewer with no connection to the Holocaust will walk away with a realization that the vast numbers connected with the Shoah each represent a person, a story, a life taken away or forever changed.

Watch trailers of recent films funded in part by the Claims Conference.

Son of Saul/ Saul Fia

“Son of Saul,” a film partially funded by the Claims Conference has been nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award and the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. The unrelentingly grim film depicts the inconceivable work of the Sonderkommandos at Auschwitz, Jewish prisoners who were forced to prepare fellow Jews for the gas chambers and remove the corpses.

Lost Town

Lost Town uses cartoon as well as archival and documentary footage to illustrate one man’s obsessive attempt to get closer to his deceased father by uncovering the story of his family’s town of Trochenbrod. First made famous by Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything Is Illuminated,” Trochenbrod was the only all-Jewish town to ever exist outside of Palestine. Trochenbrod’s 5,000 Jews were obliterated by the Nazis, except for 33 townspeople who escaped the massacre there. This personal search triggers a resurgence of interest in the town and reconnects the few remaining survivors who hadn’t seen each other in over 60 years. Learn more about the film on our blog. 

No Place on Earth

No Place on Earth shows the impossible experience of Jews who hid in two deep underground caves, uninterrupted, for longer than anyone in recorded history. For 18 months, 38 people survived by resourcefulness, will, luck and the strength of their bond.

Liga Terezin

Liga Terezin tells of the Jewish prisoners of Terezin who played soccer on improvised fields in the camp. Thousands of fellow prisoners watched the mixture of professional and amateur players and were briefly able to escape their constant realities of hunger, sickness, death and the terror of the transports east.

Numbered

Numbered introduces 30 Israeli Holocaust survivors through their testimonies of persecution and focuses on four survivors who have tattoos on their arms. Many wear their numbers as a badge of honor.

When Memory Comes

Excerpt from the film’s website: “When Memory Comes is a film about the Jewish historian Saul Friedländer (1932, Prague) and his life-long quest to describe the extermination of the European Jews without losing or repressing a primary feeling of disbelief. Friedländer’s life and work is totally intertwined with the history of Europe 
and European Jewry. He survived World War II in a convent school in France 
while his parents tried to flee to Switzerland in vain and were deported and murdered in Auschwitz.”