Larry Weinstein’s Inside Hana’s Suitcase, opening in Toronto on Nov. 6, is a beautifully crafted, seamless documentary for all ages. (with video)
Jindriska Hanusova as Hana Brady during happier days in 1938 before the invasion of the Nazis into Czechoslovakia.
Larry
Weinstein’s Inside Hana’s Suitcase, opening in Toronto on Nov. 6, is a
beautifully crafted, seamless documentary for all ages.
Jindriska Hanusova as Hana Brady during happier days in 1938 before the invasion of the Nazis into Czechoslovakia.
Weinstein artistically transforms Karen Levine’s best-selling book, Hana’s Suitcase, into a multi-layered Holocaust film unlike all others.
Inside Hana’s Suitcase is the well-known, true story of Japanese educator Fumiko Ishioka’s quest to solve the mystery of Hana Brady, the owner of a battered suitcase given by the Auschwitz Museum to Ishioka for the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre, and Ishioka’s bitter-sweet discovery that Hana died in the Holocaust, but her brother, George Brady, survived and lives in Toronto.
After Weinstein read Levine’s book – based on an article that first appeared in The CJN – he immediately envisioned a film that would blend several documentary techniques, including interviews, animation and dramatic reconstructions.
“I was inspired that this book is for young people and thought, let’s have certain techniques that would appeal to children and do dramatizations and stylize them,” Weinstein said in an interview in his Rhombus Media screening room. “And let’s have animation and mix it with documentary and make the whole thing powerful and as emotional and as heartfelt as the story is.”
Weinstein recreates scenes of Hana’s childhood in Czechoslovakia and at two concentration camps – Terezin (Theresienstadt) and Auschwitz, where she died at age 13.
“I wanted people to meet Hana. I think people can only feel the loss if they can see the people they’re losing,” said the award-winning director of 25 avant-garde films on composers including Ravel’s Brain, Beethoven’s Hair and Mozartballs.
When Weinstein discovered that composers Hans Krasa, Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas lived in Terezin and also died in Auschwitz, sharing Hana’s experience, he chose their music for the film, since it felt spiritually connected to the subject.
The poignant story, which traces the journey of the suitcase across 70 years and three continents, is narrated through endearing child storytellers from Toronto, Tokyo and the Czech Republic.
“The children telling the story are clearly not Jewish children. They are children all over the world who all relate to the story. So there’s something very hopeful in that,”Weinstein said.
What resonates with the children are George and Hana’s experience of being bullied because they’re different and the fact that they are separated from their family.
“The film is about the warmth and beauty of the family unit, and that might be more accentuated within a Jewish situation where the family unit is so important. So, when you see that ripped apart, everyone senses it. That’s pretty universal,” Weinstein said.
The film shows that although George Brady, now 81, lost his entire family in the Holocaust, he was able to move on and find peace with the help of Ishioka and her Small Wings group of children.
The film has won several awards at film festivals, including the Canwest Award for best documentary and the National Film Board Colin Low Award for innovative filmmaking, and it placed third in audience favourites at last spring’s Hot Docs Film Festival.
Inside Hana’s Suitcase opens Nov. 6 at the Sheppard Grande, 4861 Yonge St. It will open in Vancouver on Nov. 13 and Montreal on Nov. 20 and at the Cumberland Theatre, 159 Cumberland St.
A new interactive website, www.insidehanassuitcase.com, will be launched in time for the film’s opening.