The Day the Clown Cried, a film about the Holocaust that is as famous as it is mysterious, is the legendary unfinished work of Jerry Lewis, never brought to the big screen. Today, it is the focus of a documentary by Michael Lurie and Eric Friedler, which presents previously unseen scenes from the film and largely gathers testimonies from those who worked with the Lewis. In the film, the German clown Helmut Doork, arrested by the Gestapo for mocking Adolf Hitler and imprisoned in a concentration camp for political prisoners, is tasked by the camp commander with entertaining Jewish children as they await the trains bound for extermination camps, in exchange for a review of his case. This hope of gaining freedom leads him, one day, to agree to accompany the children to their deaths in the gas chambers, where he also remains, consumed by guilt, until the end.