Prophetic. 'The Oppenheim Family'
Jewish Film Festival opens in Jerusalem
Shmulik Duvdevani reviews some of prominent movies featured in festival this year
The 11th Jewish Film Festival opened Saturday in Jerusalem's Cinematheque.
This year's festival will mark the 50th anniversary for the classic Hollywood production of the "Diary of Anne Frank." Actress Millie Perkins, who was chosen out of 6,000 candidates to play the lead, is expected to attend the special screening of the George Stevens film.
The movie, which won three Academy Awards, did little to accent Frank's Jewish heritage, as Stevens chose to show her as the all-American girl.
The 1959 production is considered the most important Holocaust-related film of its time, since it called attention to what was a little-know chapter in history until then.
From the 1959 production of 'Diary of Anne Frank'
Another prominent feature in the festival is the 1938 Soviet political drama "The Oppenheim Family."
Based on the prophetic 1933 novel by German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger, the movie depicts the calamities suffered by a Jewish family in Berlin following Hitler's ascend to power.
The movie, directed by Grigori Roshal, shows its Jewish protagonists fall prey to anti-Semitism and is considered one of the most important anti-Nazi films produced in the Soviet Union between 1935 and 1939.
Alongside these two important works. The festival will also screen several interesting documentaries, including a biography of "Shoah" creator Claude Lanzmann, a French production about the Einsatzgruppen ("The Death Brigades"), "Commandant Edelman," about the life of Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, as well as actress Natalie Portman's directorial debut "Eve."
