Jon Blair’s Oscar-winning documentary Anne Frank Remembered tells the story of the Frank family and Anne Frank through newsreels, photos, and interviews. The film marked the 30th anniversary of its release earlier this year.

Anne Frank’s story has been told time and time again in one medium or another, be it book, narrative feature, documentary, or even an animated film. It makes no sense here to rehash her tragically short life. If not for Miep Gies saving Anne’s diary after the Franks were arrested and later presenting it to Otto Frank, it’s impossible to know whether we’d still be talking about Anne Frank more than 80 years after her death.

She is perhaps the best-known of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust—but without her diary, we would not be discussing Anne Frank Remembered three decades later.

Produced in association with the Anne Frank House, Blair had unprecedented access to their archives, resources, and of course, the Secret Annex. This includes previously undiscovered letters. But more importantly, Anne Frank Remembered focuses on Anne herself—not just her diary.

What does surprise me is that it took until 1995 for the first eyewitness accounts of her life to be assembled in this way. Among those interviewed are people who knew Anne from childhood through some of the last individuals to see her alive. Perhaps the distance from the Holocaust itself was what made such a film possible.

Kenneth Branagh’s narration is woven throughout the newsreels, photos, and interviews. His voice provides additional insight into Anne’s life while guiding audiences through what followed the Holocaust.

Otto Frank developed relationships with readers who wrote to him after the diary was published, and through those letters, he continued to learn about his daughter. After returning to Amsterdam and later settling in Switzerland, he devoted the rest of his life to Anne’s message of hope and tolerance.

Not surprisingly, neo-Nazis attempted to label the diary a hoax. After Otto’s death in 1980, it was proven once and for all that Anne was the diary’s author.

I think about those efforts to dismiss a young Jewish girl’s words as fraudulent—and how that impulse resonates today with those who refuse to believe Israeli women who have come forward about sexual assault at the hands of terrorists on and after October 7, 2023. It was Jew-hatred then, and it is still Jew-hatred now.

Anne Frank Remembered concludes with the only known footage of Anne Frank. Shot in 1941, she is briefly seen on a balcony during a wedding. Less than three years later, she would be forced into hiding in the Secret Annex.

“I don’t want to have lived in vain, like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death,” Anne once wrote.

It doesn’t surprise me that Anne Frank Remembered took home the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for films released in 1995. It is very well made and offers a window into Anne’s life in a runtime just shy of two hours. The film works as a complementary companion to The Diary of Anne Frank, which won three Oscars from eight nominations following its 1959 release.

It also isn’t lost on me that Holocaust documentaries and other Jewish-themed films were particularly embraced by the Academy during the late 1990s. Among those winners were The Long Way Home, The Last Days, One Day in September, and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport.

Thirty years later, Anne Frank Remembered remains essential not because it adds mythology to Anne Frank, but because it restores her humanity. In a world where truth is still challenged and Jewish suffering is still minimized or denied, the film stands as both a remembrance and a rebuke. Anne wanted to live on after her death. Through this documentary, she does—clearly, personally, and unmistakably.

DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Jon Blair
NARRATOR: Kenneth Branagh
VOICE CAST: Glenn Close

Sony Pictures Classics released Anne Frank Remembered in theaters on February 3, 1996. It previously aired on The Disney Channel on June 8, 1995. Grade: 5/5

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