Inside Hana’s Suitcase, the Holocaust documentary by director/producer Larry Weinstein, makes its world première on the opening night of Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival.

Jindrika Hanuová as young Hana and Daniel Hájek as George in Larry Weinstein’s new film Inside Hana’s Suitcase.

Based on Karen Levine’s award-winning book Hana’s Suitcase, Weinstein’s film, to be screened April 30, tells the remarkable story of how a suitcase left by young Auschwitz victim Hana Brady forever changes the lives of her brother, George Brady, in Toronto, and Holocaust educator Fumiko Ishioka in Tokyo.

At the Victoria Film Festival, where the documentary screened as a work in progress and won the Canwest Award for best documentary, the response to it and to Brady’s guest appearance was overwhelming.

“The audience broke into a spontaneous standing ovation for George and his daughter, Lara,” Weinstein said in an interview at his downtown Rhombus Media office. “One can’t help but fall in love with George in watching the film, and feeling incredible empathy for him. When he’s sad, it’s heart-breaking because he’s a brave person who doesn’t wallow in sadness. They adored him, and Lara too.”

Weinstein is known for creating award-winning, avant-garde documentaries about prolific composer-musicians, including September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill, Ravel’s Brain, Beethoven’s Hair, Mozartballs and Toscanini: In His Own Words. This is his first non-music film in 25 years.

“I hadn’t thought about making a film devoted to the Holocaust theme, but Hana’s Suitcase was such a moving book,” Weinstein said. “I knew that George and Fumiko were living, real characters, and I became interested in creating another cross between documentary and drama.”

What makes this film inspiring are the heroes – Ishioka who used the suitcase to educate children in Tokyo about religious tolerance and George and Lara Brady who travel the world with the same goal of educating children about the Holocaust.

But “the film’s not just about educating people on the Holocaust, which is always important,” Weinstein said. “It’s about a bigger subject – we have to have empathy for each other as human beings or there will be nothing left in the end.”

 Brady’s story first appeared in a CJN article in 2001. It immediately caught the imagination of author Karen Levine, who made it into an award-winning radio documentary and then wrote the book. Since then, the suitcase story has spawned Joe Schlesinger’s documentary Odyssey of Hope: Hana’s Suitcase, and Emil Sher’s play, Hana’s Suitcase, also both award-winners.

Through dream-like dramatic recreations, Weinstein presents George Brady’s life in his small Czech town and the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz concentration camps. The story unfolds as child storytellers from Canada, the Czech Republic and Japan express Brady’s emotions and compassionately relate his situation to theirs.

Creatively, Weinstein weaves in interviews, animation and photos hidden by Brady during the war, taking viewers back to Brady’s earlier days and forward to Tokyo for Ishioka’s quest to find the suitcase’s owner.

Spiritual and moving, the music was written by people who had similar experiences to those of Hana and George – three from Terezin: Hans Krasa, Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas; and two others: anti-fascist Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu and German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann, the only musician Weinstein knows of who was actively anti-fascist under Adolf Hitler.

Plans for the film include a theatrical release and CBC broadcasts.

The April 30 screening is at the Winter Garden Theatre at 9:30 p.m. It screens again on May 3 at 1:30 p.m.at the Isabel Bader Theatre.

For tickets: Hot Docs Documentary Box Office, Hazelton Lanes – Lower Level, 55 Avenue Rd. 416- 637-5150.   [email protected]