Programmers' Notes

The Shoah is among the most frequent subjects explored in Jewish cinema. Each year, the Festival receives numerous films about the Shoah to consider; the best of these uncover new information or tell underrepresented stories. Here are three such films in this year’s Festival.

Based on real events, Cloudy Sunday is a sweeping drama set in Nazi-occupied Thessaloniki, Greece. In telling the story of a forbidden romance between Estrea, a young Jewish woman, and Giorgos, a member of the Greek resistance, the film looks at the tragedy that befell Thessaloniki’s large Jewish community, which has rarely been depicted in cinema.

With a title that seems an oxymoron, the documentary Heaven In Auschwitz reveals survivors who have what seems impossible: happy memories from their time in the concentration camp. But this is the case for some Jewish youth who were part of a children’s barrack in the family camp at Auschwitz, and who credit their pleasant experiences to an unsung hero – Freddy Hirsch. This unexpected documentary wonderfully brings Freddy Hirsch’s story to light.

Why do many Poles reject the term ‘collaborator’ to describe those who aided the Nazis in destroying Poland’s Jewish community? This important question is explored in the fascinating documentary Scandal in Ivansk, when the seemingly benign rededication of a small Polish town’s Jewish cemetery ignites national controversy.

This year, I was inspired by the beauty of filmmaking, films where form and content seamlessly work together to create something special.

I am a Stefan Zweig fan. Right from the opening scene in Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe, I was immediately drawn into the exquisiteness of this film. The cinematography was gorgeous, capturing the lush surroundings of each location the story brought us to, while the performances were strong, bringing a truth and humanity to the real life characters.

Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz is one of the most unique documentaries I’ve ever seen. With a camera mounted in various locations of a concentration camp, the film simply captures visitors as they come and go and wander around the sites. I found myself completely mesmerized by how people were passing through these spaces; who was (and wasn’t) there; and how people were reacting (or not) to their surroundings. At points moving and at other points shocking, to me, Austerlitz was a fascinating social commentary and a truly thought-provoking work.

In Winding, it was not only how people move through space, but also how a river passes through a people. The filmmaker in me was captivated by the beauty and serenity of how this film was shot, and how the director interwove personal and family stories with the history of the river. The environmentalist in me appreciated the film’s cautionary tale about the connection between society’s greed and negligence and the destruction of nature.

If there is a silver lining in Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid, it is the way that it galvanised women to unite across race and class differences to assert their rights in mass demonstrations. Women taking charge of their destinies is a theme in three of our Israeli films year, but what is unique about these films is that they all deal with women in Haredi communities that have not exactly embraced the concept of modern feminism. The documentary Measures of Merit follows Ruth Collan in her bid to be the first Haredi woman elected to the Knesset. Undaunted by the hostility she encounters from both men and women in her community, Ruth remains steadfast in her resolve to represent Haredi women’s interests in Parliament.

The Women’s Balcony is an Orthodox take on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. When the women’s balcony collapses in their synagogue, a tightly knit Orthodox community goes into crisis. A charismatic young rabbi steps in to take control, but his fundamentalist leanings are an anathema to the women who refuse to be relegated to the sidelines. Uniting in protest, these cheerfully determined women demonstrate that being pious has more to do with building loving homes and a cohesive community than following inflexible rules imposed from above. Finally, rabbinical authority is also challenged in The Gravedigger’s Daughter, a powerful film that sees a woman fight for a most untraditional female role, that of gravedigger.