Kapo

Kapo (Kapò, 1960) is a wartime drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Edith, a teenage Jewish girl, arrives at a Nazi extermination camp and is offered a way out of the very worst of it: become a kapo, a prisoner given privileges in exchange for keeping the others in line. She takes it.

Pontecorvo does not turn her into a villain or a martyr — he frames the choice as arithmetic, which is somehow harder to watch. Susan Strasberg carries the moral weight through the whole film. Emmanuelle Riva, who filmed Hiroshima Mon Amour for Alain Resnais the same year, appears in a supporting role alongside Laurent Terzieff.

The film landed an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1961, critic Jacques Rivette published a landmark Cahiers du Cinéma essay indicting Pontecorvo for a single shot — the piece became foundational in debates about what a camera is and is not permitted to do. Stream Kapo online on iFILM.