MAREK EDELMAN ...AND THERE WAS LOVE IN THE GHETTO

POLISH TITLE: MAREK EDELMAN ...I BYŁA MIŁOŚĆ W GETCIE

Imagine that the city where you were born is suddenly divided in two, with a better half and a worse half. And you’re enclosed in the latter. By a wall 3 meters high, with broken glass and rolls of barbed wire on top. If you cross it, they’ll kill you. If you stay, you’ll slowly die of starvation anyway. That is precisely what happened in Eastern Europe, in Poland, in the capital city Warsaw, in the 1940s.“Why does nobody ask me if there was love in the ghetto? Why is nobody interested?” – so asked Marek Edelman, resistance fighter and the last leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, shortly before his death in 2009. In this film, he answers that very question: Good and beauty did exist in the hell of the ghetto. And there was love, too. That was the greatest value, even greater than life itself. Strong, unconditional love, where you are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, and give yourself completely to another person. Body and soul. An old woman had a dream before she died in which her father came to her and beat her for not being able to love. May we not dream such dreams. Tell your elderly father how much you love him. Hold tightly in your arms the not-so-young woman lying next to you, all night. Stroke the hair of the girl who is waiting for you. For a man who experienced hell wants to tell you – only love can save us.

GENRE:

documentary

COUNTRY:

Poland, Germany

RUNNING TIME:

80'

YEAR:

2019

COLOUR:

colour / black and white

DIRECTING:

Jolanta Dylewska, Andrzej Wajda (współpraca reżyserska)

SCRIPT:

Jolanta Dylewska, Agnieszka Holland (współpraca scenariuszowa)

DOP:

Jakub Kijowski, Jolanta Dylewska

EDITOR:

Izabela Pająk

MUSIC:

Raphael Rogiński

SOUND:

Marcin Lenarczyk

PRODUCTION:

Otter Films, Pallas Film

COPRODUCTION:

Mazowiecki i Warszawski Fundusz Filmowy