Looking at the ease with which we now capture colour pictures and transmit them around the world in seconds it's easy to forget that it was not that long ago news agencies were transmitting their wire photographs as colour separations, usually cyan, magenta and yellow - a process that relied on Clerk Maxwell's discovery.
Shot predominantly in black and white, with spot colour for a Jewish child's red coat the film's unique identifying mark it recalls the tradition of post-war Italian neo-realism and the even older photographs of Roman Vishniac of Jewish life in Poland before the Nazis.