Part of Freedom of Expression Award: Péter Forgács

Director Péter Forgács in person at the Castro.

The Danube Exodus received its U.S. premiere at SFJFF in 1999. We are honored to reprise Forgacs’s gripping journey into the world of refugees displaced by war, as witnessed by the captain of a Danube cruise ship between 1938 and 1945. The Hungarian riverboat captain filmed the transformation of his elegant ship into a refugee liner that carried Central European Jews desperate to escape the coming conflagration, traveling, by way of the Danube River to the Black Sea and beyond, to Palestine. In deeply moving and personal moments, the captain captures the hopes and anxieties of his passengers as they dance, pray and even find romance. As the war continues, he begins to ferry a different set of refugees in the other direction: Bessarabian Germans expelled by the Russians in 1940.

—Peter L. Stein

Presented with The Maelstrom: A Family Chronicle

Co-sponsored by George & Sejong Sarlo

Co-presented by Contemporary Jewish Museum and Contra Costa Jewish Community Center