PAST LIFE – St. Louis Jewish Film Festival – film review

Tuesday, June 6 at 1 PM at Plaza Frontenac Cinema

 

– By Cate Marquis –

 

Two sisters uncover their father’s secret past in the true story-based Israeli mystery PAST LIFE, one of the films playing as part of the annual St. Louis Jewish Film Festival. The Israeli film, in Hebrew, English German and Polish with English subtitles, is also set to return to the Plaza Frontenac Cinema on June 9 for a longer theatrical run.

The film is an intriguing look into Israel in the late 1970s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall and crumbling of European communism, when many survivors of the Holocaust did not speak about their wartime experiences as they focused on building their young nation.

In 1977, young Sephi Milch (Joy Rieger), an Israeli music student with a lovely soprano voice but ambitions to be a composer, travels to West Berlin for a concert with her school choir. After the concert, an elderly woman (Katarzyna Gniewkowska) runs up to her and, speaking in Polish, loudly accuses Sephi’s father of murder. Sephi is both rattled and mystified by the incident, despite an apology from the woman’s son, a renowned German composer (Rafael Stachowiak) who had attended the concert.

Back in Israel, Sephi wants to put the unsettling event behind her but her older sister Nana (Nelly Tagar) senses something is wrong. Shy Sephi reluctantly tells her about the incident but makes her bolder, older sister promise to say nothing to to their stern, demanding father or emotional, sensitive mother (Evgenia Dodina). Dr. Baruch Milch (Doron Tavory) is a successful gynecologist but, like many Holocaust survivors in Israel, he had never talked to his daughters about his past.

READ THE FULL REVIEW AT WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS:

http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2017/05/past-life-st-louis-jewish-film-festival-review/