Two Greek films will be presented this year at the 26th Australian Jewish Film Festival (JIFF), premiering in the annual three-week national event due to kick off in November with screenings in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane and Auckland.
In collaboration with the Greek Film Festival in Sydney, JIFF will be presenting a screening of Cloudy Sunday by acclaimed director Manousos Manousakis.
Lawrence Russo, director of the Treasures documentary, will be in attendance at JIFF 2016, and there will be Q&A events held alongside his screenings in Melbourne and Sydney.
CLOUDY SUNDAY
(Ouzeri Tsitsanis)
Greece/2015/Feature/116 mins/Greek with English subtitles
Winner of Best Costume Design, Best Supporting Actress and Best Makeup at the 2016 Hellenic Film Academy Awards, this film also received four stars in Berlin.
The story takes place in WWII Thessaloniki, following a forbidden love story between Estrea − a Greek Jewish girl − and Giorgos − a Christian Orthodox Greek man − as depicted in the namesake book by Giorgos Skampardonis.
In 1942-43, Greece’s second-largest city is under German occupation, suffering the brutality of racial and religious discrimination imposed by the Nazis. At the core of the film, famous Greek songwriter and composer Vasilis Tsitsanis, owner of taverna Ouzeri Tsitsanis, offers refuge to the young couple.
Despite steadfast resistance, the hunt for Jews gradually spreads and suddenly simple choices become life-threatening.
Manousakis uses real locations in Greece to follow the real events that took place, including the train yards and the actual train box cars which were used to transport tens of thousands of Thessaloniki’s Jews to Auschwitz. It is amid this chaos that Tsitsanis wakes up one cloudy Sunday morning to bloodstains on the snow covering his porch, which lead him to the dead body of a young man. On that day he writes one of his greatest international hits, Sinnefiasmeni Kiriaki.
“Tsitsanis had only recently gotten married at the time and his wife had given birth to their daughter,” Manousos Manousakis explains.
“Through this film and through the eyes of this couple who have done nothing other than fall in love, the irrational nature of racism becomes evident. With Cloudy Sunday, we want to remind those who may have forgotten, and teach those who may not know, what fascism and what Nazism are. This is why we made this film.”
TREASURES: THE LOST JEWS OF KASTORIA, GREECE (Trezoros)
USA, Greece, Israel/2016/Documentary/93 mins/Greek, English, Hebrew with English subtitles
Directors Lawrence Russo and Larry Confino have filmed this moving documentary in three parts, detailing the lives of a Sephardic community in Greece by interviewing survivors all over the world.
A coastal city renowned for its idyllic beauty, Kastoria was once home to a harmonious and vibrant population of Jews and Christians until Axis forces invaded Greece in 1940. When Mussolini fell from power the Nazis took control of the town, dooming the community that had existed there for more than two millennia.
Russo and Confino have carefully stitched together a documentary through the illuminating testimonials of survivors as a tribute, and a reminder, of a formerly vibrant Greek community afflicted by the Holocaust.
Featuring interviews with survivors scattered across the diaspora, Trezoros is considered to be a discerning historical document and a sharp study of the little known Sephardic Jewish community in Greece. The film also uses never-before-seen archival footage, notably of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, which leads up to the highly-emotional story related by its survivors, most tellingly by the 90-year-old mother of director Lawrence Russo.
JIFF dates around Australia and New Zealand:
Sydney: 26 Oct – 23 Nov
Perth: 26 Oct – 6 Nov
Melbourne: 27 Oct – 23 Nov
Auckland, Brisbane & Canberra: 10, 12,13, 19 & 20 Nov
The JIFF 2016 Program will officially be launched on 28 and 29 September at special advance screenings of Woody Allen’s brand new film, ‘Cafe Society’.