In Our Synagogue (2019)

This is a black and white feature film based on the unfinished story by Franz Kafka of the same name. The story is very simple and is the only one where Kafka ever mentioned his religion. The director Ivan Orlenko significantly enriched the initial plot, having turned it into the story about the Holocaust resembling Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful. A mysterious creature, neither a mouse nor a rat, sometimes appears in the old synagogue in the South-West of Ukraine at the end of the1930s, and no one can catch it. Despite the fact that the male churchgoers have gotten long accustomed to the mystery that is hiding under the wooden benches (and women habitually scream when they notice the creature, interrupting the silence during the service), one boy is obsessively chasing it, never seeing or paying attention to the catastrophe that is happening around him - and to him, that chase becomes his own way of spiritual learning. It is amazing that the director could find the location for the film – the old, untouched synagogue in the Carpathian Mountains, as well as several old men who still speak Yiddish and could teach the language to the young actor David Tobak. Ivan Orlenko recreated the almost forgotten world. In Our Synagogue is the first Ukraonian feature film in Yiddish, and it received the main national film awards - the Golden Dziga Award - in 2020 for the Best Short Film.