Sam Mendes to direct Holocaust-themed documentary film What They Found for the BBC
What They Found will air on BBC Two and streamer iPlayer
UK pubcaster the BBC has commissioned film and stage director Sam Mendes (Skyfall) to make his first documentary, What They Found, for BBC Two and streamer iPlayer.
Produced by factual prodco Lightbox in association with All3Media-backed Neal Street Productions and the Imperial War Museum, it tells the story of two members of the British Army’s film and photographic unit who accompanied the troops liberating Bergen-Belsen at the end of the Second World War.
British soldier-cameramen Sgt Mike Lewis and Sgt Bill Lawrie were the first to capture chilling footage from the Nazi deathcamp, revealing the horrors of the Holocaust.
Mendes will direct the film, which is scheduled to air in April to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation. Executive producers are Pippa Harris for Neal Street, Caro Howell and Vicky Stanbury for Imperial War Museums and David Baddiel.
Simon Young, head of commissioning, history, BBC, said: “In April 1945, BBC Radio broadcast a horrifying eyewitness report from Bergen-Belsen. There could be no more fitting way to mark the anniversary of the liberation than by working with Sam Mendes and his team to create a chilling vision of what the liberators found.”
Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn, producers of What They Found, and co-Founders of Lightbox, said: “The last survivors and witnesses to the Nazi atrocities at Bergen-Belsen and elsewhere sadly won’t be with us for much longer.
“Sam Mendes has created a powerful and undeniable record of these events at a time when surveys show that more and more young people aren’t aware of the Holocaust, and its veracity is being debated or denied in ever-increasing numbers.”
Elsewhere the BBC has also commissioned a new Louis Theroux-fronted documentary called The Settlers.
The doc will see Theroux travels to the West Bank to meet some of the large and growing ultra-nationalist community of Israeli settlers in a new series for BBC iPlayer and BBC Two
It is a Mindhouse production for BBC Two and BBC iPlayer, commissioned by Clare Sillery, head of documentary commissioning, with Fran Baker as commissioning editor.
