Ida
Cecilia Peck remembers her first meeting with Linor Abargil back in 2008. The Miss World winner of 1998 was looking for a filmmaker to recount her story.
Just six weeks before attaining her crown, the then-18-year-old Israeli had been a victim of a terrifying kidnapping, stabbing and rape in Milan.
“Linor had vowed then to tell her story one day,” said Peck, a director/producer and daughter of actor Gregory Peck. “But it took her 10 years to heal and get ready. She wanted to make a film about her fight for justice, in the hopes of encouraging other survivors of rape around the world not to be ashamed and not to stay silent.”
Peck created “Brave Miss World,” an Emmy-nominated documentary about Abargil’s journey from rape victim to global activist. She realized that a documentary with a powerful narrative could be impactful.
“Linor was so riveting in person,” Peck said. “She was determined to change the way people think about rape. But she was also very vulnerable, willing to risk her hard-fought healing to do a film that could help others.”
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Kristen Houser, vice president of public relations for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape; Rhonda Hendrickson, director of violence intervention and prevention services at the YWCA Greater Harrisburg; and Kate Cook, a local rape survivor-activist.
“Brave Miss World” is the opening film in this year’s Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival, which this month celebrates its 21st year.
The festival offers other dramatic films. “The Green Prince” is a documentary account of Moab Hassan Youssef, son of a Hamas leader, who emerged as one of Israel’s prized informants and the Shin Bet (internal security service) agent Gonan Ben Yitzhak, who risked his career to protect him.
More wrenching is “24 Days,” the French true-life thriller based on the 2006 abduction in Paris of French Jew Ilan Halimi. It was a case the police treated as an ordinary, for-ransom kidnapping, ignoring the anti-Semitic elements. Prof. Robert Weiner of Lafayette College will speak after the film.
Nominated for three Israeli Academy Awards, “Apples in the Desert” concerns Rebecca, an only child, who lives a cloistered existence with her strictly religious Sephardic parents in Jerusalem. Unhappy with the restrictions of home and community, she secretly breaks taboos and attends dance classes, where she forms a relationship with secular kibbutznik Dooby.
“It’s a good coming-of-age story,” said Julie Sherman, festival chairwoman and coordinator. “Since this is the Film Festival’s 21st year, we selected a few films with a coming-of-age theme.”
Also featured is the Polish movie “Ida.” The 2013 Oscar-winning Best Foreign Film concerns a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a nun. Orphaned as an infant, she meets her aunt, her only living relative, who tells Ida her parents were Jewish. The two women embark on a road trip into the Polish countryside to learn the fate of their family.
Two other Holocaust-era films are “Run, Boy, Run,” the true story of a Polish boy who seeks the kindness of others in his solitary struggle to outlast the Nazi occupation and keep alive his Jewish faith, and “The Last Mentsch,” about a survivor of Auschwitz who has denied his identity.
Also included is the Golden Globe-nominated courtroom drama, “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem.” An Israeli woman (Ronit Elkabetz) is trapped in a loveless marriage and seeks to finalize a divorce from her estranged husband. In Orthodoxy, dissolution of a marriage is possible only with the husband’s full consent, and her devout husband refuses.
If the festival seems drama-heavy, it is also full of comedies, said Sherman.
“There are comic films for everyone,” she said. “These include the date-night film, ‘It Happened in St. Tropez,’ a fun, light, romantic comedy/French farce with exaggerated family conflicts between two brothers who are always fighting and love triangles that will particularly appeal to Baby Boomers.”
Israel’s “Hunting Elephants” is a coming-of-age crime comedy about a 12-year-old who bands together with his grandfather and two elderly men to rob the bank the boy’s father had worked in. “The film is great fun and appeals across generations,” said Sherman.
“Zero Motivation” has been called a movie that combines “Private Benjamin” and “M*A*S*H,” but, Sherman said, it can be more accurately described as “M*A*S*H” meets “Office Space.”
In a remote desert military base, a platoon of young female Israeli conscripts serve out their time playing computer games, singing pop songs, and conspiring to get transferred to Tel Aviv—while endlessly serving coffee to the men in charge.
“It’s definitely a millennial movie,” Sherman said.
The 2015 Jewish Film Festival opens May 14 with “Brave Miss World” at the Jewish Community Center, 3301 N. Front St., Harrisburg. It continues May 15 to 21 at Midtown Cinema, 250 Reily St., Harrisburg. A full schedule of films can be found at www.hbgjff.com.
For more information about the special screening of “Brave Miss World,” contact Roberta Silver at robertaleighesq@aol.com or 717-379-5997.
