A fragment of home-movie footage shot on the eve of the Second World War provides the inspiration for Bianca Stigter’s haunting movie – both a poignant memorial to a lost Jewish community and a potent testament to the power of film.

Some 3,000 Jews lived in the small Polish town of Nasielsk in 1938. Fewer than 100 survived the war. Stigter takes three minutes of faded 16mm footage filmed outside the town’s synagogue in 1938 and tries to postpone its ending – exploring not just the people whose faces it documents but the town, the community and the way of life it captures. Co-produced by Steve McQueen and narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a singularly powerful work of documentary filmmaking, an extraordinary journey into a handful of once-ordinary lives.