Telling Difficult Stories: Inside ‘Making The Tattooist of Auschwitz’

By Joe Buckingham

At the beginning of Making The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Executive Producer Claire Mundell asks, “How do you tell a story of the Holocaust? How do you honour a survivor’s memory?”?

At Ralph we had to ask ourselves similar questions when Sky first approached us to shoot behind the scenes on their adaptation of Heather Morris’ worldwide bestseller.

How do you tell this story? The story of the cast and crew and their deep emotional connection to the Holocaust. The story of all the careful and respectful work that’s gone into this hugely ambitious production. And, at the heart of it, the story of the real Holocaust survivor, Lali Sokolov, without whom there’d be no story to tell at all.??

It’s not a topic you take lightly. A lot of our other on set projects with Sky have been on the complete opposite end of the seriousness spectrum: telling ChatGPT jokes to David Schwimmer, sharing a cup of tea with Florence Pugh, and getting sweary with Brian Cox. It was clear that The Tattooist would be a completely different kind of project to work on.

And yet, in some ways, our approach remained the same as always: thinking from the perspective of a fan. “Fan” feels like an odd word to use in this context, but if you strip back the stan culture and the shipping wars, at the core of it a fan is just someone who’s connected with something on an emotional level. And right from our first read of the scripts we had absolutely no doubt that people were going to connect with The Tattooist on an emotional level.?

So we asked ourselves what the “fans” - people who’d been moved by the incredible story of The Tattooist - would want to know about the making of the adaptation. What was it like to film? How did they go about adapting it for the screen? What were the many challenges of such an ambitious project?

We kept coming back to the theme of storytelling: Lali Sokolov telling his story to Heather Morris; Sky and Synchronicity Films telling Lali’s story on screen for the first time; and Ralph telling the story of them telling the story.?

With that focus firmly in our minds, we began our first shoots in a muddy field outside Bratislava that was being turned into a hauntingly recognisable piece of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and a dark and oppressive interior barracks set where we filmed our first few interviews.

Once we started getting footage back into the office and sharing it with Sky, it was clear that we had something pretty special on our hands. The behind the scenes footage looked like a glimpse into another world. The interviews were disarming and warm, but had moments of real emotional punch: Jewish cast members discussing how it felt to have their heads shaved for the first time, production heads picking out moments from a recce of the real Auschwitz that brought them to tears.?

It started to feel like it wouldn’t do this project justice to cut what we were shooting into 30 second sound bites and leave so much incredible material on the cutting room floor. In our interviews, Jonah Hauer-King (Lali) had said “We're doing this properly, and we're not shying away from it,” and it seemed like the on set footage deserved the same kind of treatment.

Sky clearly agreed, as it was at this point that they asked us about making a full-length Making Of episode, to go out on air alongside the show. It’s not exactly our usual bread and butter - but we absolutely cannot resist a challenge. And making a 27-minute documentary can’t be that hard, right?

Okay, it wasn’t exactly easy. As the editor, I may have had the cushy job of shuffling things about on a computer screen, but all the while our tireless shoot producers Andy and Andrea were arranging shoots across four different countries, pulling all-nighters to direct L.A. interviews over Zoom, and at one point preparing to shoot with 24 hours notice… over a bank holiday.?

Even now, watching it back for what must be the hundredth time I’m still overwhelmed by Lali’s story, and the research and care that’s gone into bringing it to the screen. When Hans Zimmer described The Tattooist of Auschwitz to us as “a love story set in nightmares,” he was of course talking about Lali and Gita’s incredible true story, but we also got to see first-hand the love that every single person put into this colossal production - and to do our best to let that love show through in the edit too.

Fifteen months, four countries, 18 interviewees and more than 34 hours of footage later - here we are. Ralph’s first ever broadcast documentary - and hopefully not our last. So, whether you’re looking for a fun and snappy 30 second TikTok, or a 30 minute television documentary… or even something else we’ve never even tried before: you know where to find us.

“Making The Tattooist of Auschwitz” is available on Sky & NOW as episode 7 of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.