Hundreds of people were expected to attend Lisbon’s first-ever Jewish film festival this week.
The three-day festival, “Judaica: 1st exhibition of cinema and culture,” was scheduled to open on May 22 at Lisbon’s main art cinema, Cinema Sao Jorge, and was to include 15 Jewish and Israeli documentaries and features, according to the Jornal Digital news site.
It is the Portuguese capital’s first Jewish film festival, according to the Facebook page of the Jewish community of Lisbon.
Scheduled to be present at the festival’s opening were Radu Mihaileanu, a Jewish Romanian-born French film director and screenwriter, as well as the Israeli filmmakers Dina Zvi-Riklis and Eran Riklis.
Other activities at the festival, co-sponsored by the City of Lisbon and the centrally located Sao Jorge, were to include performances by the Lisbon Klezmer brass band.
Elena Piotok, the Mexican-born initiator of the festival, told the Lusa news agency that her goal was “to bring films that usually don’t arrive here.”
Piotok added that some of the films have “huge educational importance,” such as “Never Forget To Lie,” a 2012 documentary by filmmaker Marian Marzynski about how he survived the Holocaust as a child in Poland by leaving his parents behind and hiding his identity. — jta