Voyages

Thirty-eight-year-old French filmmaker Emmanuel Finkiel (MADAME JACQUES SUR LA CROISETTE) brings us three remarkable new tales. A woman on a bus tour of Poland is left behind at a Jewish cemetery. A Parisian widow receives a call from a man claiming to be her long-lost father. A newly arrived 85 year-old Russian immigrant wanders the streets of Tel Aviv looking for a distant cousin. We sense the director’s deep respect for his actors, some of them non-professionals, some of them stars of the Yiddish stage. A lost Eastern-European Jewish world echoes in their actions, gestures and turns of phrase. Finkiel’s rhythm is a perfect flux of breathtaking moments that alternate fatigue with bizarre serenity, ordered by the searching for and finding of loved ones. The director quietly builds his effects to a devastating finale that links his characters together in the most profoundly emotional sense.

Between 1979 and 1996, director Emmanuel Finkiel was assistant director to renowned filmmakers Krysztof Kieslowski (thee Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, Red), Christian de Chalogne, Bertrand Tavernier (L'Appât), Jean Luc Godard (Nouvelle Vague) and others.