| Colette | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster | |
| Directed by | Anthony Giacchino |
| Written by | Anthony Giacchino |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | Colette Marin-Catherine |
| Cinematography | Rose Bush |
| Edited by | Aaron Matthews |
| Music by | Nami Melumad |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | The Guardian |
Release date |
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Running time | 24 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | French |
Colette is a 2020 French-language American documentary film directed by Anthony Giacchino and produced by Alice Doyard, Annie Small and Aaron Matthews. [1]
Together with aspiring historian Lucie Fouble, 90-year-old French Resistance fighter Colette Marin-Catherine travels to Nordhausen to visit Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Until then, she had avoided visiting the place where her brother, Jean-Pierre, died. The whole family was active in the resistance. She wrote down the registration numbers of passing trucks. Her brother had collected weapons for the resistance and was arrested in the process. He died in the concentration camp at the age of 19 as a result of forced labor combined with malnutrition. [2] Because of her experiences, she avoided traveling to Germany. Fouble contacted her after researching her brother.
When they first meet, Fouble asks if they could take Jean Pierre's photo on the trip. Colette tells how her father had hid a camera under his shirt while visiting in order to take the photo. While on the train to Nordhausen, Colette talks about how she felt distant from her brother, and describes how she felt guilty when her mother wished that she had been taken in place of Jean-Pierre. At Nordhausen, the former mayor wants to say a few words to Colette, but she interrupts him, saying that she is not feeling well. The next day, they visit the concentration camp's memorial site. They see the prison block that her brother likely slept in, as well as the tunnels where prisoners were forced to build V-2 rockets. While looking over the ruins of the prison block, Colette bursts into tears as she had forgotten to bring flowers for her brother. After visiting the camp's crematorium, she presents Fouble with a ring Jean-Pierre had made for her mother.
The film was directed by Anthony Giacchino and produced by Alice Doyard, Aaron Matthews, and Annie Small. It was released by The Guardian . The idea came to the team when they were filming a documentary about a U.S. World War II veteran who made an emergency landing in Normandy during Operation Overlord. Their guide introduced them to Colette Marin-Catherine. An interview ensued, but the filmmakers did not want a simple portrait. At first, they seemed unable to persuade Marin-Catherine to visit Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp because of her strong aversion to the place, or to Germany in general, and because she had spent 70 years trying to forget the past. During their research, however, they came across Lucie Fouble, a historian, who was doing research on her brother. With Fouble's support, they succeeded in making the film. [3]
The filmmakers paid attention to reverence and gave Marin-Catherine the opportunity to determine when the camera should stop filming. Before each scene, they outlined how they would film that scene, but gave Fouble control over the scene and the freedom to express her feelings, as well as the final word. [3]
It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 93rd Academy Awards. [4] [5] [6] Co-produced by Oculus and Respawn Entertainment as part of the documentary gallery for the virtual reality video game Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond , Colette is the first film produced by a video game studio to win or be nominated for an Academy Award. [7]
Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman was a Czech-American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the United States in 1968. Throughout Forman's career he won two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Golden Bear, a César Award, and the Czech Lion.
Nordhausen is a city in Thuringia, Germany. It is the capital of the Nordhausen district and the urban centre of northern Thuringia and the southern Harz region; its population is 42,000. Nordhausen is located approximately 60 km north of Erfurt, 80 km west of Halle, 85 km south of Braunschweig and 60 km east of Göttingen.
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.
Richard Baer was a German SS officer who, among other assignments, was the commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to January 1945, and right after, from February to April 1945, commandant of Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Following the war, Baer lived under an assumed name to avoid prosecution but was recognized and arrested in December 1960. He died in detention before he could stand trial.
Lucie Samuel, born Lucie Bernard, and better known as Lucie Aubrac, was a French history teacher and member of the French Resistance during World War II. In 1938, she earned an agrégation of history, and in 1939 she married Raymond Samuel, who became known as Raymond Aubrac during the war.
Fritz Pröll was a resistance fighter against the Nazi régime.
Ellrich is a town in the district of Nordhausen, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated on the southern edge of the Harz, 13 km northwest of Nordhausen. It is the northernmost settlement in Thuringia.
Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler was a Nazi German SS-Obersturmführer and Schutzhaftlagerführer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World War II. Captured by the Allies at the end of the war, Hößler was charged with war crimes in the First Bergen-Belsen Trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging at Hameln Prison in 1945.
Anthony Giacchino is an Academy Award winning American documentary filmmaker and is also director and composer Michael Giacchino's brother.
Jean Burger, alias "Mario", was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. A member of the French communist party, he was born in Metz on 16 February 1907 and died at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp on 3 April 1945.
Respawn Entertainment, LLC is an American video game development studio founded in 2010 by Jason West and Vince Zampella and owned by Electronic Arts since 2017. West and Zampella previously co-founded Infinity Ward and created the Call of Duty franchise, where they were responsible for its development until 2010.
International concentration camp committees are organizations composed of former inmates of the various Nazi concentration camps, formed at various times, primarily after the Second World War. Although most survivors have since died and those who are still alive are generally octogenarians, the committees are still active.
Arpiar Aslanian was a French anti-fascist of Armenian descent, communist, husband of the writer Louise Aslanian, and a prominent figure in the French Resistance.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is a 2020 first-person shooter virtual reality game developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on December 11, 2020. It is the first release in the Medal of Honor series since 2012's Medal of Honor: Warfighter.
Amanda "Mouchka" Stassart (1923–2013) was a member of the Resistance during World War II and later a president of the Belgian Association of Air Hostesses.
Jens-Christian Wagner is a German historian who specializes in the Nazi era and the politics of memory. Wagner has published multiple academic books about Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and its subcamps. He was the director of Mittelbau-Dora memorial from 2001, was the chairman of Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation, and became the overseer of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation in 2020.
Ben Proudfoot is a Canadian filmmaker. He is most noted as director of The Queen of Basketball, winner of the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject; as well as codirector with Kris Bowers of the short documentary film A Concerto Is a Conversation, which was an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary at the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021.
Albert Kuntz was a German goldsmith, soldier, communist and concentration camp victim. A soldier in the First World War, Kuntz rose to become an elected representative of the German Communist Party in Berlin's Prussian Landtag. In 1933 he was arrested by the Gestapo, and sent to a succession of prisons and concentration camps. He died in January 1945 at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where he had been organizing the sabotage of the V-2 rocket production line. Following his death, he was revered as an anti-fascist hero in East Germany.
Colette Marin-Catherine, is a French resistance fighter from Bretteville-l'Orgueilleuse. She joined the Resistance in the summer of 1944 where she was a reconnaissance agent and then a nurse after the Normandy landings; also resistant, her brother Jean-Pierre Catherine was arrested in 1943 and died in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in 1945.
Alice Doyard is an Oscar winning French film maker. Her area of specialism is history and the effects of international conflict. She was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2021. In the same year she was named as one of the 50 Most influential French people by Vanity Fair magazine. Doyard was born in Grenoble in 1972, one of four children of Jean Doyard, an engineer, and his wife Catherine, a freelance journalist. She moved to Paris in her early teens.
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