To Cure Longing, prizewinning documentary film by Artyom Dubitski, is about searching for one’s roots and discovering a complex web of family relations.
The film is about the filmmaker’s own
family. His father, Lev, was from Russia
and his mother from Ukraine. They made
Aliyah with Artyom as a young boy. In
Israel, they were accompanied by Lev’s father and his step-mother. But Artyom, as a young man, never understood
why they were apparently estranged from his father’s birth mother. What happened to the family?
Suddenly, Lev asks his son to accompany him on a journey to the Ural region of Russia to visit his other grandmother. This meeting with a wonderful woman, who says that she “always loved him even from a distance,” provides him with a window to the traumas of the past. It also brings out emotions in his father, a man who is usually so inarticulate and inexpressive.
I liked this film because the filmmaker’s father
(usually unable to express his emotions, talking about the little things like the
artwork on the door or the building materials used for putting up the housing
projects) develops and becomes a character that we really find compelling.
Although he is a simple guy, our hearts go out to him for all the years that he
lost in knowing his lovely mother, who lives so far away.
The film won the award for best documentary at
the Jerusalem Film Festival this past week.
According to the judges’ comments, “the filmmaker himself holds the
camera and directs sensitive conversations, creating powerful moments which can
be seen as if from a Chekhov play”!
To Cure Longing (documentary, 65 minutes) was made with assistance from the
Gesher Multi-cultural Film Fund, and I am proud to say that I sit on the board
of this fund.
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