My Father's House

84 Minutes, 1947
Genre:
Feature

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Directed by: Herbert Kline
Cast: Ronnie Cohen, Irene Broza, Yossef Millo, Zalman Lebiush, Yitzhak Danziger, Raphael Klatchkin
Production:Herbert Kline, Meyer Levin
Photographer: Floyd Crosby
Language: English
| Subtitles not available

A PR film funded by the JNF (Jewish National Fund) towards raising awareness to the plight of Holocaust survivors and their assimilation and integration struggles in their new land which, in 1950, made the official selection for the Venice Film Festival. The film tells the story of David, a boy who survived the Holocaust and arrives in Palestine on board an illegal migrant boat, in the hopes of reuniting with his father. He struggles to get on with the other kids in the kibbutz and decides to go on a journey to find his long-lost father who had promised him, just before they were separated in the war, that they would meet again in Palestine.
In his adventures, David scours the length and breadth of the country. Along the way, he meets fellow Holocaust survivors in a kibbutz and youth village who give him their firsthand harrowing accounts of vast communities and a whole culture essentially wiped out in Europe. As David listens, through their testimonies he also shines a hopeful light on the individuals and landscapes from which a new culture will rise – under the wings of a gestating Jewish state.
Oscar-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who had shot High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), and Sallah (aka Sallah Shabati) (Ephraim Kishon, 1964), was on DoP duties – capturing the land in all its natural glory. The film features music by the Palestine Symphony Orchestra that would later become the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.

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