Paper Clips (2004) on Netflix
G20041h 22mDocumentaryWar
Teachers in Whitwell, Tennessee, want their middle school students to grasp the scale of the Holocaust. The class decides to collect six million paper clips, one for each Jewish life lost.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.3/101,835 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes72%
Plot summary
Whitwell, Tennessee, is a small rural community of fewer than two thousand people, almost all of them white and Christian. In 1998, teachers at the middle school look for a way to open their students' eyes to diversity and to convey the scale of the Holocaust. Unable to picture six million victims, the eighth graders begin collecting paper clips, one for each Jewish person killed by the Nazis. The project draws responses from far beyond the classroom, and Holocaust survivors travel to Whitwell to tell the students what they lived through. The students, their teachers, the survivors and the people who mailed paper clips are among those interviewed.
Cast
- Casey Condraas Himself
- Cassie Crabtreeas Herself
- Rachel Gleitmanas Herself
- Mary Jane Higdonas Herself
- Linda Hooperas Herself
- Bernard Igielskias Himself
- George Jacobsas Himself
- Sheila Levineas Herself
- Sandra Robertsas Herself
- Peter Schroederas Himself
- Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrandas Herself
Show all 15 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Paper Clips (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The real school project behind the film began in 1998 with three teachers at the middle school in Whitwell, Tennessee, and was carried out in their eighth grade classrooms. The students ultimately collected over 25 million paperclips, each one representing a human life lost in the Holocaust.
- The documentary exists because Rachel Pinchot read a Washington Post article about the Whitwell Middle School project and brought the idea to her husband Ari Pinchot at The Johnson Group, which sent directors Joe Fab and Elliot Berlin to film the school, eventually gathering about 150 hours of footage.
- Berlin cut a seven-minute presentation out of the footage and sent it to Matthew Hiltzik, then head of communications at Miramax. Hiltzik was impressed by the demo and showed it to the head of Miramax, convinced that the project was worth a full-length documentary.
