The Last Laugh

The documentary asks a single question: can a catastrophe of this scale be joked about, and if so where the line falls. Ferne Pearlstein puts it both to comedians and to survivors. Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Gilbert Gottfried, Rob and Carl Reiner each describe where their own line sits. Alongside that the film shows footage of cabaret stages set up inside the camps and how humour was used there as a means of getting through. Its backbone is the account of a woman who survived Auschwitz, and the reactions of survivors to present-day jokes turn out to differ enormously. Pearlstein imposes no single answer, and opens up what else counts as untouchable in a society that prizes free speech. It premiered at Tribeca in 2016.