In the latest edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts Julia Mintz, the director of acclaimed Holocaust documentary “Four Winters,” a story of Jewish resistance against the Nazis now playing at the Lumiere Cinema in Beverly Hills for a limited engagement. You can purchase TICKETS HERE, and watch the trailer HERE.
Awarded the “Human Rights Award” at Hamptons Doc Fest, “Best Documentary” at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, and an official contender for “Best Documentary Feature” at the 95th Academy Awards, “Four Winters” is a particularly salient film in light of the recent rise in antisemitism. Marjorie Ingall of Tablet called it “a must-see Holocaust movie (no, really).”
The film—written, directed, and produced by Mintz—tells story of just some of the over 25,000 Jewish partisans who fought back against the Nazis and their collaborators from deep within the forests of World War II’s Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Belarus. Against extraordinary odds, they escaped Nazi slaughter, transforming from young innocents raised in closely knit families to courageous resistance fighters. Mintz and her team interviewed the last surviving partisans for the film, which reveals a stunning narrative of heroism and resilience that shatters the myth of Jewish passivity.
“I set out to make this film in search of an answer to my long-lasting childhood question: ‘Why didn’t the Jews fight back?'” Mintz says. “What I discovered, through the survivors’ searing memories, were riveting stories of courageous and inspiring resistance – a chapter in our collective history about the Jewish partisans that needed to be told.”