The Conference

20 January 1942, Berlin. There is a meeting at a villa. Those attending are senior officials from ministries, from the security services and from the party. There is one item on the agenda. The meeting is not a debate but a work of coordination: the confusion of authority will be settled, which institution does what will be made clear, and the details of implementation discussed. What is being discussed is the destruction of the Jews of Europe. The meeting lasts about ninety minutes and food is served partway through. Matti Geschonneck directs. It is a German production. The source is the minutes of the meeting; the document was found after the war and the screenplay rests largely on that text and on historical research. The narrative runs close to real time and the setting never changes. Its most uncomfortable feature is the register; the participants do not raise their voices, the discussion is technical, and the matter is treated as a question of logistics. The section given to legal detail is at the centre; who is covered under which definition is discussed at length. The same meeting has been filmed several times before; this version is spoken of as the one that stays closest to the document. There is almost no music and the camera stays still. Who it is for: people who watch historical document films and single setting narratives. Who it is not for: nothing happens, the film is entirely talk, and the subject is extremely heavy.