Son of Saul and a New Representation of Intolerable Images

Son of Saul (Saul fia, 2015) is a debut feature by Lászlo Nemes about the events in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the sonderkommando rebellion in 1944. The film was labelled anti-Schindler’s List. With a specific approach that includes shooting in shallow focus, a constant presence of elements outside the field of vision and narration through lengthy long takes, limiting the viewer’s access to visual and factual information, substantially narrows the view of the events in the camp. Thus, a large part of the comprehension and experiencing of the film is left to the viewer’s imagination and their individual view of the Nazi “final solution”. Thereby, Nemes opens a series of new questions on the possibility of representing the Shoah in the field of film fiction, which are again radicalised through the new, second generation of “experiencing” genocide as the bearer of a specific post-memory.

The integral (Slovenian) version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!