Sam Mendes will be directing his first documentary, What They Found, the BBC has announced.
The documentary will tell the story of Sergeants Mike Lewis and Bill Lawrie, who helped document the horrors of the Holocaust. The pair worked in the British Army’s Film and Photographic Unit, and were embedded with troops in North West Europe. A mission into Germany took the group to what they thought was a typhus hospital; none of them could have imagined what awaited in Bergen-Belsen.
The documentary uses both the footage and words of Lewis and Lawrie to tell an intimate, moving story of documenting atrocity.
“Using only the voices and footage shot by two British army cameramen during the latter stages of the Second World War, I hope this documentary gives a unique perspective on the discovery of the horrors of Belsen, and the reality of the Holocaust,” said Sam Mendes.
“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,” said Simon Young, the BBC’s head of commissioning for history.
What They Found will air on BBC Two and be available on BBC iPlayer in April, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.