See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Elyse Wanshel
Brooklyn Daily
Throw some gefilte fish on the barbie!
Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill will be screening “My Australia,” on Jan. 26 during its ninth annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival.
The movie, which won the audience choice award at the 2011 Jerusalem Film Festival, tells the tale of Tadek, a 10-year-old who is growing up fatherless in 1960s Poland and is obsessed with all things Australian. His mother — a secret Holocaust survivor — raises Tadek and his 14-year-old brother, Andrzej, Catholic in an attempt to protect her children from the social persecution she so brutally experienced.
Yet, when the confused and misinformed Andrzej joins an anti-Semitic gang and gets himself and young Tadek arrested for beating up Jews, the mother decides to move the family to Israel.
To vegemite-coat the truth, she tells Tadek that they are going to Australia and tasks Andrzej with the responsibility of telling his little brother about their Jewish heritage. Now that’s what we call a didgeridoo-it-girl!
“Very few Israeli films deal with what happens to the generation after the Holocaust,” said Roberta Kahn, a long-time publicist for the festival. “And this is a very hopeful story. There’s a lot of love between the mother and the kids.”
The touching film, which is told from Tadek’s prepubescent and platypus-loving perspective, plays at Kane Street Synagogue on Jan. 26 at 8 pm, and is so good it’ll boomerang you back to the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival for years to come, mate.
Kane Street Synagogue [236 Kane St. between Court and Clinton Streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875–1550, www.kanestreet.org/iff]. Jan. 26, 8 pm, $12, $30 for festival.