Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest takes place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust who walk try to earn the title “Miss Holocaust Survivor”. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, the personal traumas of the survivors remain as deep as ever.

Eytan İpeker’s thought-provoking debut documentary goes behind-the-scenes of a controversial pageant for Shoah survivors. Compassionately focused on the journey of a contestant, The Pageant raises many questions regarding exploitation, acts of remembrance, and the notion of suffering as spectacle.