Watch “Colette,” the Oscar-Winning Short Documentary (2021)

Thanks to The Guardian, you can now watch online “Colette,” the film that recent­ly won the Acad­e­my Award in the cat­e­go­ry of best doc­u­men­tary short. The British news­pa­per sets the stage as fol­lows:

90-year-old Colette Marin-Cather­ine con­fronts her past by vis­it­ing the Ger­man con­cen­tra­tion camp Mit­tel­bau-Dora where her broth­er was killed. As a young girl, she fought Hitler’s Nazis as a mem­ber of the French Resis­tance. For 74 years, she has refused to step foot in Ger­many, but that changes when a young his­to­ry stu­dent named Lucie enters her life. Pre­pared to re-open old wounds and revis­it the ter­rors of that time, Marin-Cather­ine offers impor­tant lessons for us all.

In a sep­a­rate inter­view, film­mak­ers Antho­ny Giacchi­no and Alice Doyard “explain how they found out about the sto­ry of Colette and why they decid­ed to make a doc­u­men­tary about her.”

“Colette” will be added to our list of online doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Online Eric Hob­s­bawm: The Con­so­la­tions of His­to­ry, a Doc­u­men­tary Explor­ing the Life & Work of the Influ­en­tial His­to­ri­an

Glass: The Oscar-Win­ning “Per­fect Short Doc­u­men­tary” on Dutch Glass­mak­ing (1958)

Why Man Cre­ates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Look at Cre­ativ­i­ty (1968)

Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short, The Dot and the Line, Cel­e­brates Geom­e­try and Hard Work (1965)

Watch the Funky, Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Music of Herb Alpert & the Tijua­na Brass (1966)