The last mentsch
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The last mentsch |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2013 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Pierre-Henry Salfati |
| script | Pierre-Henry Salfati Almut Ghetto |
| production |
Anita Elsani Sylvain Bursztejn Rolf Schmid Marc Oliver Dreher |
| music | René Dohmen Joachim Dürbeck |
| camera | Felix von Muralt |
| cut |
Regina Bärtschi Hansjörg Weißbrich |
| occupation | |
| |
The Last Mentsch (based on the Yiddish term “Mentsch”, which is also known as “Mentsh” in American English ) is a German feature film / road movie by director Pierre-Henry Salfati from 2013, which was published in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hungary was filmed. He tells of an old man in search of his Jewish roots (the role is played by the 83-year-old Mario Adorf ). The premiere took place on November 24, 2013 at the cinema festival in Lünen.
action
Marcus Schwartz is an old man who lives in Cologne. He survived the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps , but never spoke about them and even took on another name. He has always suppressed his past as Menachem Teitelbaum and even rejected the state pension to which he was entitled as a Jew . With the end of his life approaching, he wished to be traditionally buried in a Jewish cemetery. For this, Marcus has to get documents that prove that he is Jewish. The rebellious Gül, a young German-Turkish woman, drives him spontaneously in her boyfriend's car to Vác on the Danube in Hungary , where he was born and from where his family was deported to the German concentration camps in 1942 to look for traces and the necessary evidence search. In an upscale Budapest hotel, where his parents had worked and were betrayed to the Gestapo, the descendant of the hotel operator, his former playmate, no longer remembers Marcus, but takes over his bill.
In his birthplace in Hungary he meets the blind Ethel, who has apparently been waiting for him for a long time. They approach and explain to the rabbi that they want to get married. Before that happens, Ethel goes into the water and drowns. A young employee of Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation can finally persuade Marcus to reveal his memories of the past in front of a camera. Even the help of his old Greek friend Mikos, who lives there and who in his youth also worked as Schabbesgoj for the family on Saturdays, is not enough to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles in the community. He is turned away several times by the local young rabbi and does not receive the requested certificate. When visiting the new synagogue, Marcus looks for a legendary chair that supposedly fulfills wishes - not knowing that the original has been in Israel for 80 years. He sits down on the chair shown to him believing it is the right chair. At the end of the service it is found that he died in the meantime. His wish for a Jewish burial is now fulfilled in his old homeland.
Gül returns to Germany alone and now has Marcus' concentration camp number as a tattoo on her forearm.
production
The film was produced by Elsani film, Cologne in co-production with FAMA FILM AG / Rolf Schmid, Sequoia Films / Sylvain Bursztejn and MAMOKO Entertainment / Marc Oliver Dreher and Martin Ludwig.
Reviews
“The fictional yet believable characters wear Salfati's ambiguous road movie. With their strong acting performances, Adorf and Derr always pull us into the predictable story. While Adorf is very withdrawn at the beginning, in which he lets Marcus' charm and Yiddish joke play, Gül's rebellious, non-conformist attitude is embodied in a downright gorgeous manner by Derr. Together they will soon be pretty good friends. "
background
The director Pierre-Henry Salfati became known for documentaries with predominantly Jewish themes.
Melissa Raphael mentions two theologians with the names Joel Teitelbaum and Menachem Harton in one sentence in her book The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust 2003.
literature
A book of the same name by Pierre-Henry Salfati and Alexander Schuller was created based on the script for the film.
- Pierre-Henry Salfati, Alexander Schuller: The last Mentsch. Berlin: Insel-Verl. 2014. (Insel Taschenbuch, 4292). ISBN 978-3-458-35992-0
Web links
- Website of the film (with still photos, soundtrack, educational material for schools and an interview text with M. Adorf)
- The last Mentsch in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- "The last Mentsch" at moviepilot.de
- Entry at programmkino.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Christoph Gutknecht: Sprachgeschichte (n) - "A real Mentsh!" Jüdische Allgemeine, February 13, 2014
- ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3545892/?ref_=nv_sr_1
- ↑ http://www.famafilm.ch/filme/der-letzt-mentsch/?contUid=0
- ↑ http://www.derletztementsch.de/
- ↑ http://www.programmkino.de/content/links.php?id=2452
- ^ The last Mentsch , website, accessed October 7, 2017.
- ↑ Film review by Kalle Somnitz ( Memento of the original from December 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
