When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit opens a rich program of films at Canada’s longest-running Jewish Film Festival.
With the unveiling of its 31st annual lineup, the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival becomes the longest-running such fest in Canada. This year’s edition brings an eclectic batch of newbies, plus some better titles from the recent festival circuit.
There’s even one oldie-but-goodie, with the closing night punted to the 1981 adaptation of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen.
Over the decades, some viewers may have grown weary of the preponderance of Holocaust-themed titles at the VJFF, but as the last survivors and witnesses fade from the planet, and a new tide of racist nationalism sweeps western democracies, it becomes imperative to keep the stark warnings of history alive. Recent years have seen a shift in perspective, with odd digressions and even satirical takes filling in the blanks. Taika Waititi’s Oscar-grabbing JoJo Rabbit, for example, was an eyeopener for some and a head-scratcher for others.
Coincidentally, this fest opens with another bunnybased childhood tale. The German-Swiss-French coproduction When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit sees events through the eyes of one little girl as her family—sans her beloved stuffed animal—runs across those countries as the Nazis storm through Europe. More typical is My Name Is Sara (March 1), about a 13-year-old who escapes her family’s fate by fleeing through Poland and Ukraine and passing for gentile. Based on a true story, it veers toward melodrama and makes its mostly eastern European cast speak English.
Much subtler fare is found in Hungary’s beautiful Those Who Remained (March 7), about a barely surviving doctor and a bereft teenage girl who find family in each other in postwar Budapest. The movie is languorously slow, but very rewarding.
The complexity of life in modern Israel—afflicted by corruption and deep polarization, like most places right now—is well-conveyed here, most uniquely in the super smart Tel Aviv on Fire (February 28 and 29), which finds a Palestinian slacker and a preening IDF officer as unlikely cowriters on a hit Arabic-language soap opera.
Elsewhere, the influence of Hebraic artists on other cultures is found in docs as different as Fiddler, A Miracle of Miracles (March 1), about the nonmusical origins of Fiddler on the Roof; The Spy Behind Home Plate (March 8), profiling versatile baseballer Moe Berg, who went underground during the war; and Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band (February 29 and March 4), centring on the famous Canadian rocker.
Here, the Diaspora also expands to Montana (The Rabbi Goes West, March 5), East Asia (Shalom Taiwan, March 4), Mexico (Leona, March 2), and, most memorably, Brazil, in Back to Maracanã (March 3). A rare Israeli-Brazilian coproduction, the beautifully shot Maracanã follows three generations of Jewish men from their Tel Aviv home to the grandfather’s roots in Rio de Janeiro, and the legendary soccer stadium there. The old man’s lifelong futebol obsession forms the basis of an underbudgeted, sometimes hokey, and frequently funny World Cup story directed by an Argentine expat. It takes you places tourists never go. And that’s true of the whole darn festival.
The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival takes place at the Rothstein Theatre and Fifth Avenue Cinemas from February 27 to March 8. More information is at www.vjff.org/.