Screening in the Gut Eibenhof culture barn 

Festival pre-opening with subsequent screening of the touching documentary about Irmi Selver from Chemnitz.

Program Flow:

Presentation of the FILM WITHOUT BORDERS – Youth Projects 2023 with filmmakers and workshop leaders Anna Faroqui and Haim Peretz.

Short filmHoly Holocaust, Israel 2021, 17 min, directors: Osi Wald and Noa Berman-Herzberg, animation: Osi Wald, Ella Ben-Yacov, Yair Harel, and Liron Narunsky

Can we confront our history while refusing to be defined by it? Is it possible to overcome the past without erasing it? These compelling questions circle one another in „Holy Holocaust,“ a wonderfully animated short film that depicts the close friendship between Noa, a white Israeli Jew, and Jenny, a Black German woman, who meet in an art class in Paris and build an intense relationship that, however, seems to fracture due to a family secret. „Holy Holocaust“ raises the question of whether blood truly means more than the bond of a chosen sisterhood.

Following that, screening of the film IRMI

IRMI is a very touching documentary about Irmi Selver from Chemnitz, who lost her husband and children while trying to flee Hitler's Europe. Her courage and will to live carried her through the tragedies and upheavals she had to experience as a German Jew in the 20th century. Filmmaker Veronica Selver, who is IRMI's daughter, together with her friend and filmmaker Susan Fanshel, produced this moving historical document using old films and photos from IRMI's life.

Excerpts from IRMI's memoirs are read by the German actress Hanna Schygulla. It is the deeply moving portrait of a woman whose strength and confidence—and perhaps most astonishingly, her joy of life—could not be defeated, even in the face of unimaginable loss. IRMI died in 2004 at the age of 98.

5:00 PM – 6:55 PM

Rated 0 for all ages (Temporary rating in accordance with the German Youth Protection Act)