The Accountant of Auschwitz

The Accountant of Auschwitz
Film poster
Directed byMatthew Shoychet
Written byRicki Gurwitz
Produced byRic Esther Bienstock
Ricki Gurwitz
Jeff Sackman
(Executive Producer)
Berry Meyerowitz
(Executive Producer)
CinematographyLuke McCutcheon
Edited byTed Husband
Music byKen Myhr
Production
companies
Good Soup Productions
TLNT Productions
Distributed byAqute Media
Release date
  • April 29, 2018 (2018-04-29) (Hot Docs)
Running time
78 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

The Accountant of Auschwitz is a Canadian documentary film, produced by Ricki Gurwitz and Ric Esther Bienstock and directed by Matthew Shoychet.[1] The film centres on lawyer Thomas Walther's prosecution in the 2010s of former Schutzstaffel member Oskar Gröning, focusing in part on the ethical debate around whether there's any useful purpose to be served in prosecuting an elderly man for crimes he committed 60 years earlier.[2]

The film premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in 2018,[3] and later had a brief theatrical run before airing on Documentary Channel and Netflix.

The film won four Canadian Screen Awards at the 8th Canadian Screen Awards in 2020, for Best History Documentary Program or Series, Best Editorial Research (Ricki Gurwitz), Best Visual Research (Ricki Gurwitz), and Best Music in a Non-Fiction Program or Series (Ken Myhr).[4] It was also nominated, but did not win, for Best Editing in a Documentary Program or Series (Ted Husband) and Best Direction in a Documentary Program (Shoychet).