Centrepiece Film: SHTTL

Audience Award Winner, Rome Film Festival 2022

Photographed in a shtetl that the production team constructed outside of Kyiv, this single-shot film is entirely in Yiddish. Set in the twenty-four hours before the Nazi invasion of Ukraine, SHTTL tells a story about life, love and hope set in an unnamed Yiddish Ukrainian village at the border of Poland. Amid communal tensions between tradition and modernity, two young men are fighting over a woman they both desire to marry. The cast features some native Yiddish speakers, including Saul Rubinek. With its focus on life rather than death, it is a tribute to those who perished.

In-person Guest Actor Saul Rubinek

Reviews:

“A towering, single-take masterpiece of the lives we’ve lost … A keenly observed, deeply cathartic movie” Slash Film

“‘SHTTL’ is already one of the year’s best films … It is a film that deserves a viewing on the loftiest screen available. This film left me breathless.” Reel News Daily