2nd Block of Short Films
Year: 2019
Country: UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus
Director: Ben Price, Jonathan Schey, Jamie Elman, Anita Lester, Francine Zuckerman, Ofir Feldman, Tatiana Fedorovskaya
Cast: Tarek Slater, Andrew Grosse, Toby Jones, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Trevor C. Mann, Camille Coduri, Lucy Cohu, George Dawson, Macey Eddy, KC Flanagan, Mark Hadfield, Elisa Hayrapetyan, Eli Batalion, Mayim Bialik, Jamie Elman, Deb Filler, Kira Gelineau, Daniel Kash, Rebecca Liddiard, Alon Nashman, Doraid Liddawi, Mohammad Bakri, Salwa Nakkari,Vitali Friedland Hayun, Maria Zreik, Mahmoud More, Anat Hadid, Samira Arbid, Bilal Babbay, Taleb Atrash, Miki Marmur, Lea Hamami, Hadas Hayun, Gali Blecher, Yakov Belorusov, Dmitriy Pevrushin, Mariya Petrovich
Genre: short, drama, comedy, animation
Runtime: 85 min.
Age: 12+
Country: UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus
Director: Ben Price, Jonathan Schey, Jamie Elman, Anita Lester, Francine Zuckerman, Ofir Feldman, Tatiana Fedorovskaya
Cast: Tarek Slater, Andrew Grosse, Toby Jones, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Trevor C. Mann, Camille Coduri, Lucy Cohu, George Dawson, Macey Eddy, KC Flanagan, Mark Hadfield, Elisa Hayrapetyan, Eli Batalion, Mayim Bialik, Jamie Elman, Deb Filler, Kira Gelineau, Daniel Kash, Rebecca Liddiard, Alon Nashman, Doraid Liddawi, Mohammad Bakri, Salwa Nakkari,Vitali Friedland Hayun, Maria Zreik, Mahmoud More, Anat Hadid, Samira Arbid, Bilal Babbay, Taleb Atrash, Miki Marmur, Lea Hamami, Hadas Hayun, Gali Blecher, Yakov Belorusov, Dmitriy Pevrushin, Mariya Petrovich
Genre: short, drama, comedy, animation
Runtime: 85 min.
Age: 12+
Hope dies last, dir. Ben Price
UK, 2017, 7 min.
A sickly scrawny man in a striped uniform takes a shaving brush and foam, and with a sharp blade, he shaves the back of the head of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz camp himself. They will never speak with one another, and Joseph (we only learn his name during the credits) will never harm Höss, will not stop the flood of horrible murders with yet another murder. This short sketch about life of a death camp makes us feel pain and grief of millions of people who had passed beyond the walls of the shaving room during the imprisonment of Joseph, the man who outlived his torturer.
The Entertainer, dir. Jonathan Schey
UK, 2017, 15 min.
He used to be the host of a silly, but popular television quiz, but these days one of his side jobs is to be a Bar Mitzvah host, doing work that gives people no joy, that no one even needs, and that only stands in the way of people entertaining themselves at a dignified ceremony. He
faces the eternal challenge of all actors - how can you bring joy to other people when you yourself have none? Played by Toby Jones, one of Britain’s best character actors (he played and voiced Dobby in Harry Potter films, starred in Captain America: The First Avenger and
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as wells as on television drama Sherlock), this sad character becomes a hero of a story that resembles an ancient tragedy about being not needed at the feast of life of other people.
The Double Date, dir. Jamie Elman
Canada, 2016, 6 min.
A blind date for Leizer with the perfect woman turns into a battle of nebbish proportions.
Still alive, dir. Anita Lester
Still alive, dir. Anita Lester
Australia, 2017, 8 min.
This bone-chilling minimalistic animation film (made with black, white and red colors only) is voiced by the director herself, the Australian illustrator Anita Lester, whose grand-aunt had lost her entire family in Nazi camps and has then gone mad. Her confused, distorted, extrapolated memories full of despair and horror, of mysterious interiors and someone’s eyes, became the foundation of this impressive conceptual short film.
Mr. Bernstein, dir. Francine Zuckerman
Canada, 2016, 12 min.
Bernstein, who later became a renowned conductor, had once performed the Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, a composer of Jewish ancestry, with a concentration camp orchestra. All of the musicians were prisoners, and the father of the protagonist was an
involuntary listener. Years later the spectator, who has grown old and became a baker in New Zealand, and the conductor accidentally find themselves in the same city, but do not cross paths. These accidental meetings that one remembers for the entire life are probably familiar
to every Jewish family on the planet.
In His Place, dir. Ofir Feldman
Israel, 2018, 24 min.
A complicated and nonliteral Jewish film about feelings the name for which has not yet been invented. A friend of the family in which the wife died in labour loved her more than life itself, although he will never say it out loud. He gladly agrees to babysit the child for a day and brings her home, where he is suddenly faced with resentment from his relatives. This multifigured film with beautiful unspoken truths talks about widowhood of other people and oneself, about others’ children who can be dearer than the yet unborn children of one’s own, and about love that does not follow the loved one into the grave.
Mum's Hairpins, dir. Tatiana Fedorovskaya
Germany / Russia / Ukraine / Belarus, 2019, 20 min.
Tatiana Fedorovskaya (a promising director and producer, a participant of Berlinale Talents 2019) made a short historical sketch in dimmed colours about the very beginning of the war. A ten-year-old boy runs away from home when Nazi soldiers arrive, accidentally grabbing his mother’s box with hairpins on his way. He escapes the invaders by pure miracle, lives a long life and, sitting at the head of a big table with his family, he remembers that tragic episode of his horrible childhood.
