The BFI have announced the February UK DVD release of André Singer’s powerful documentary feature film about the liberation of the Nazi concentrations camps, Night Will Fall (2014).

Using moving eyewitness testimonies, the film reveals how combat and newsreel cameramen filmed the shocking scenes they encountered, and why, in 1945, a documentary aimed at proving the terrible events took place was never finished.

When Allied forces liberated the concentration camps, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army cameramen, revealing for the first time the horror of what had happened. In 1945, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later the founder of Granada TV) commissioned a documentary using British, Soviet and American footage to provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ crimes. His top British filmmaking team included writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman, editor Stewart McAllister and, as treatment adviser, Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US governments, the film was shelved.

In this compelling documentary by André Singer (executive producer, The Act of Killing), the full story of the filming of the camps and the fate of Bernstein’s project, which has now been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums, can finally be told.

escribed by Stephen Fry as "Dark, deep, disturbing, shocking, brilliant" when it was released in cinemas last September, and lauded by the critics, Night Will Fall will be on Channel 4 this month to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day, and then released by the BFI on DVD on 2nd February 2015 at the RRP of £19.99, with a host of contextualising extras including short films and exclusive interviews.

The extra features will include:

• Original trailer

• Death Mills (Hanuš Burger and Billy Wilder, 1946, 22 mins): US propaganda film about the Nazi concentration camps

• Oświęcim (Auschwitz) (1945, 22 mins): Russian propaganda film

• Belsen Death Camp Leaders Meet Justice (1945, 2 mins): short newsreel about the Nuremberg trials

• Night Will Fall – Panel Discussion (2014, 13 mins)

• An Interview with Dr Jeremy Hicks at Auschwitz Concentration Camp (2014, 24 mins)

• An Interview with Professor Rainer Schulze at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp (2014, 28 mins)

• An interview with Professor David Cesarani at Buchenwald Concentration Camp (2014, 25 mins)

• An Interview with Caroline Moorehead (2014, 13 mins)

• Stills gallery

• Illustrated booklet with credits and essays by Nick James, André Singer, Sally Angel, Toby Haggith and Patrick Russell