She is also known for her documentaries about World War II and for appearing in and editing Man with a Movie Camera (1929).
Though she began as an editor, Svilova moved away from doing fiction films and onto montage documentary.
They were regarded as montage theorists and together, they "proclaimed a 'death sentence' on the cinema that came before, faulting it for mixing in 'foreign matter' from theater and literature.
[9] Shortly after Man with a Movie Camera, Kaufman and Vertov had a falling out over artistic differences resulting in the two brothers never working together again.
Vertov's work was condemned for being too formalist and not adhering to the socialist realism expectations of the time.
She filmed a documentary, which included reenactments, titled Auschwitz, part of an exhibition titled "Filming the War; the Soviets and the Holocaust (1941-1946)" (9 January 2015 – 27 September 2015) in Paris, France at the Memorial de la Shoah.
She later directed a film about the trials, condemning the warmongering and atrocities present in World War II.