AN EYEWITNESS RECOLLECTION OF ANNE FRANK.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

Jon Blair's superb documentary - an Academy Award nominee - is the first to tell the story of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank and her family through the eyewitness accounts of survivors who knew them.

As related by Miep Gies, a family employee who brought food and news to the Franks' hiding place every day - and who preserved Anne's diary after the family was taken away from their secret annex by the Nazis - Anne's character comes very much to life. She was a saucy, spirited girl who wanted to become a famous writer, and did so, but only under the most tragic and remarkable of circumstances.

The Franks' happy times are charmingly recounted by Anne's girlhood friends, German women now in their 60s. In one of the movie's most unforgettable moments, girlhood friend Hanneli Goslar recalls an unexpected reunion with Anne across a barbed-wire fence at Bergen-Belsen. Goslar was shocked, thinking the Franks had escaped to Switzerland. Gaunt and sick with typhus, Anne died days later, just a month before the concentration camp was liberated by the Allies.

Though many potential viewers may be reluctant to revisit any reminder of the most terrible story ever told, this is a valuable and extremely well-done document, as life-affirming as it is devastating. Particularly important are its compelling eyewitness interviews, since there are still those among us who actually believe the Holocaust never happened. For teen-agers, too, this is an excellent introduction to the historical events.

Swift-moving, for the most part - though the death camp sections are punishing, as always - and engagingly narrated by Kenneth Branagh and Glenn Close, the production appears to have spared no expense in finding ways to tell the story.

The documentary relates how Anne's beloved father, Otto Frank, the only family member to survive - though he weighed 115 pounds when the Russians liberated his camp - saw to it that the diary was published. Years later, he began receiving thousands of letters from children - all of which he says he answered - who saw him as an ideal father. Perhaps it was some compensation for his loss.

THE FACTS

The film: "Anne Frank Remembered" (PG; disturbing historical content).

The stars: The documentary features narration by Kenneth Branagh and Glenn Close.

Behind the scenes: Written, produced and directed by Jon Blair, in association with the BBC and the Disney Channel. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Running time: Two hours, two minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Music Hall in Beverly Hills; Edwards Town Center in Costa Mesa.

Our rating: Four Stars.