Taking cinephiles to diabolic times of the Nazi era when the dreaded German word ‘Auschwitz’ sent death stared starkly at helpless diaspora and history’s horrific days which was witness to the most inhuman brutalities unleashed on people — be it a child, man or woman, is this Wednesday’s cinematic outing at Suchitra.

Presenting one of most vivid footages of horrors of Nazi concentration camps, and filmed at post-war Auschwitz site, is renowned French auteur and pre-eminent flag-bearer of New Wave or Nouvelle Vague film movement Alain Resnais’ Night & Fog (Nuit et brouillard).

Set in post-war Poland’s Aushchwitz site, the 1955 docu-feature, combining colour footage with unsettling black and white newsreels and stills brings before viewers humanity’s gruesome horrors as never before as it narrates the story of Holocaust. The film takes its dual-meaning title from the arrival of interned prisoners into concentration camps under cloak of darkness, and subconscious suppression of knowledge and culpability for the resulting horror of committed atrocities.

Described by film-maker François Truffaut as “the greatest film ever made,” the most moving and thought-provoking film sees Resnais create one of most powerful and haunting chronicle of cruelty, dehumanisation, and denial of personal responsibility.

Night & Fog, which evocatively contrasts the tranquility of desolate post-Holocaust concentration camp at Auschwitz with horrific events that occurred there during World War II, and reflects on diffusion of guilt, is a scathing indictment of conscious, deliberate obscuration of truth with moral and universal repercussions.

Focusing primarily on questions of hate and human responsibility, with heart-rending footages of prisoners and victims from the camp, Resnais investigates the cyclical nature of man’s violence toward man throwing up the unsettling suggestion that such horrors could visit mankind again.  Screening 6.45 pm, Suchitra, 36, B V Karanth Road, IX Main, Banashankari II Stage. For details call 26711785.