Love it was not (2020)
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Country:
Israel
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Duration:
83 min
- Program:
- Type:
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Genre:
biography, drama, investigation
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Director:
Maya Sarfaty
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Producer:
Nir Saar, Kurt Langbein
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Cast:
Helena Citron, Ayelet Albenda, Daniel Langbein
About film
Love It Was Not is a conflicting documentary melodrama about the tragic love between the Auschwitz prisoner and her SS jailer — just like in Andrei Konchalovsky’s Paradise or Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter. In 1942, the young and beautiful Helena Citron became one of the first thousand Jewish women sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. There she caught the eye of the high-ranking Austrian SS officer Franz Wunsch, who fell madly in love with her, did his best to protect Helena when possible, and one time even saved her sister Roza. Thirty years after the Second World War, Citron and Wunsch will meet again, this time in the courtroom, where Wunsch will face trial for his war crimes.
Rewards and nominations
- DocAviv 2020 — Best Israeli Film
- IDFA 2020 — International Premiere
- Romy Gala 2021 (Austria) — nominee: Best Documentary
Director
Maya Sarfaty is an Israeli director and screenwriter. Her first directorial experience, the film Water (2012), was screened at the Venice Film Festival. Sarfaty’s short film The Most Beautiful Woman (2016) won the Student Academy Awards as the Best Foreign Documentary. Her latest documentary work, Love It Was Not, gained much praise at major documentary and Jewish film festivals, including the famous IDFA. Initially, the director wanted to make this love story between a Nazi officer and a Jewish woman into a narrative feature, but felt too close to distorting and romanticising history, and so created a documentary instead.
Along with
- Category:
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Speaker:
Zara Arutyunyan
Along with
- Category:
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Speaker:
Zara Arutyunyan
Trailer
Director
Maya Sarfaty is an Israeli director and screenwriter. Her first directorial experience, the film Water (2012), was screened at the Venice Film Festival. Sarfaty’s short film The Most Beautiful Woman (2016) won the Student Academy Awards as the Best Foreign Documentary. Her latest documentary work, Love It Was Not, gained much praise at major documentary and Jewish film festivals, including the famous IDFA. Initially, the director wanted to make this love story between a Nazi officer and a Jewish woman into a narrative feature, but felt too close to distorting and romanticising history, and so created a documentary instead.
