It turns out, 40 years later, that the struggle to be accurate above all else, to never distort the facts, still continues, and Shoah is still a central defence in it. All I Had Was Nothingness furthers the aim.

The result will never hold up to the real thing, and it never tries to. But "Nothingness" proves to be an insightful making-of about a movie masterpiece, offering up a 90-minute preview of what’s in store for the next nine hours.

Ribot’s film is as much about the process and purpose of documentary filmmaking itself as it is about the Holocaust, about the toll of trial and failure, the struggle to clarify ethics, and the ongoing refining of technique, strategy, and vision.

Surely though there must be a point at which Lanzmann’s footage becomes whittled down to its least effective parts. What is presented here has some curiosity value, but feels more the domain of a supporting feature for bluray than a work in its own right.