The 6th Festival of Jewish Film in Zagreb

The 6th Jewish Film Festival started in Zagreb on Sunday. The program consists of 45 films which are being shown during the whole week. The topic of this year’s festival is tolerance.

The first day of the festival was opened by the Croatian premiere of the movie “Sarah’s Key”. Kristin Scott Thomas is playing the role of an American journalist who found out that she lives in a flat which had been taken from the Jewish family. She sets off to in a search for the only living member of the family.

The Honorary President of the Festival Branko Lustig chose this film himself stressing out the fact that it is one of the best movies on the topic of the holocaust.

Among 13 featured films there is also a movie which had got numerous film awards “Rózyczka” (Little Rose) by Jan Kidawa-Blonski. It is a story of a dangerous love triangle which took place in Poland in 1968.

There is also an interesting French movie called “Free Men” directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi. It is about the group of Muslims who took part in Resistance and helped Jews to escape from Paris in 1942.

There is also the film which got the reward at Cannes Film Festival for the best debut. It is the film called “Breathing” directed by Karl Markovics. We still remember him playing the role of a police inspector in an Austrian TV series “Inspector Rex”. The film tells a story of a lonely young man who grew up in juvenile centers and takes a job in a city morgue in order to avoid prison.

A talking cat

Among the documentaries there are several films which are very interesting. The example is the film “The Rescuers” which talks about a young activist woman from Rwanda. She joins the well-known historian in his research. They visit 15 countries to interview the survivors and some descendants of the diplomats who saved thousands of Jews from concentration camps. 

Finally, we recommend the film “The rabbi’s cat” which also got awards at European festivals. The story takes place in Algeria in 1920. The rabbi has a teenager daughter and suddenly their cat started to talk.