Nathan Meisler

An Israeli drama

In a port far from Iran, a young worker is in love with a girl.

This semi-documentary film (and Poland’s last Yiddish feature) features the comedy duo Shimon Dzigan and Israel Shumacher who had recently returned from the Soviet Union, and Jewish children who had survived the Holocaust. Directed on location by Nathan Gross and Shaul Goskind at at the JDC-supported Helenowek Colony, an orphanage and school near Lodz, this film includes Dzigan and Shumacher's virtuoso turn as all the characters in Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke Brent (Kasrilevke is Burning), and an exchange of roles where they become the children's audience. Reversals continue during the performers' visit to the children's residence, as the children teach adults about the healing possibilities of music, dance and storytelling.

The dark drama of a peasant family from the second half of the 19th century: Seduced by a municipal clerk (in exchange for a promise to release her husband from military service), the woman dies at the hands of her jealous husband.