Fioretta is a 2023 documentary film directed by Matthew Mishory. It tells the story of American lawyer and genealogist E. Randol Schoenberg, who brings his reluctant teenage son Joey along for the journey of a lifetime to reclaim 500 years of their family story. [1]
The film begins in Malibu, California, where Schoenberg and his son live, and navigates through Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic to track down their ancestors. Along the way they meet a motley cast of characters who guide them towards their ultimate goal of finding Fioretta, the family’s matriarch, buried five centuries ago in a Venice Jewish cemetery. [2] [3]
Shula Kopf of The Jerusalem Post called Fioretta a "beautifully crafted, visually elegant documentary through five centuries of Jewish history". [2]
Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times said "A well-meaning but slapdash travelogue, Fioretta does find gratifying closure in the company that the Schoenbergs find: curators of a collective memory that won’t fade on their watch." [3]
Samantha Bergeson of IndieWire said "Genealogist Randy Schoenberg, the grandson of composer Jewish-Austrian Arnold Schoenberg, sets out to reclaim his Viennese family legacy, but gets bogged down by intricate details." [4]
Maximilian Schell was a Swiss actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, his second acting role in Hollywood. Born in Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zürich. After World War II ended, Schell took up acting and directing full-time. He appeared in numerous German films, often anti-war, before moving to Hollywood.
Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery was an American actress whose career spanned five decades in film, stage, and television. She portrayed the good witch Samantha Stephens on the popular television series Bewitched, which earned her five Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations.
The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.
Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, applies retroactively to acts prior to its enactment in 1976.
The March of the Living is an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day observed in the Jewish calendar, thousands of participants march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
Maria Altmann was an Austrian-American Jewish refugee from Austria, who fled her home country after it was annexed to the Nazi’s Third Reich. She is noted for her ultimately successful legal campaign to reclaim from the Government of Austria five family-owned paintings by the artist Gustav Klimt that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is an oil painting on canvas, with gold leaf, by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Viennese and Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. The portrait is the final and most fully representative work of Klimt's golden phase. It was the first of two depictions of Adele by Klimt—the second was completed in 1912; these were two of several works by the artist that the family owned.
Eric Randol Schoenberg is an American lawyer and genealogist, based in Los Angeles, California, specializing in legal cases related to the recovery of looted or stolen artworks, particularly those by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
Holocaust Museum LA, formerly known as Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, is a museum located in Pan Pacific Park within the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1961 by Holocaust survivors, Holocaust Museum LA is the oldest museum of its kind in the United States. Its mission is to commemorate those murdered in the Holocaust, honor those who survived, educate about the Holocaust, and inspire a more dignified and humane world.
Laura Bialis is an American-Israeli filmmaker best known for directing and producing the documentary films Rock in the Red Zone (2015) and Refusenik (2008).
David A. Permut is an American film producer. He has worked on dozens of films over 40 years, and has received both Academy and Emmy Award nominations.
Woman in Gold is a 2015 biographical drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Alexi Kaye Campbell. The film stars Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jonathan Pryce.
Anne-Marie O'Connor is an American journalist and writer who authored The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. This bestselling story is about the eight-year legal battle by Vienna emigre Maria Altmann, represented by Los Angeles attorney E. Randol Schoenberg, to reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings from her native Austria. This saga that also inspired a Harvey Weinstein movie, Woman in Gold, in which Helen Mirren played Maria Altmann. One of the paintings, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, sold for a record $135 million in 2006 to Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie New York, where the painting is on view.
Filmage: The Story of Descendents/All is a 2013 independent documentary film chronicling the history of the American punk rock bands the Descendents and All. It was written by Matt Riggle, who produced and directed it with Deedle LaCour. The film uses an oral history format, telling the bands' stories through the use of interviews with over 40 subjects, as well as new and archival footage. It stars drummer Bill Stevenson, singer Milo Aukerman, bassist Karl Alvarez, and guitarist Stephen Egerton, and features nearly all past and present members of both bands. Filmage also features numerous musicians who were contemporaries of, worked with, or were influenced by the Descendents and All.
Stealing Klimt is a 2007 documentary film about Maria Altmann's attempt to recover five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis in 1938, from Austria.
The Diplomat is a biographical documentary film released in 2015 about former U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, whose five-decade career began as a Foreign Service Officer in Vietnam during the war. At the time of his death in December 2010, he was the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The documentary's perspective is from Holbrooke's son, David, who directed the film.
Restoring Tomorrow is a 2017 documentary film directed by Aaron Wolf that recounts the history and the restoration of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, California.
Matthew Mishory is an American film director of Israeli descent. He has directed both narrative and documentary films and was named a "rising talent" by Variety Magazine in 2013. His award-winning 2009 film, Delphinium, about Derek Jarman, was preserved by the British Film Institute in its National Film Archive.
Araby (Portuguese:Arábia) is a 2017 Brazilian drama film, directed by João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa. The film was produced by Vitor Graize through Katásia Filmes, and Vasto Mundo. The film stars Murilo Caliari in the lead role alongside Aristides de Sousa, Renata Cabral, and Renan Rovida. The film premiered in 2017 at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
The Burning Child is a 2019 American-Austrian feature documentary film directed by Joseph Leo Koerner and Christian D. Bruun. Created by Harvard art historian Joseph Koerner, the film explores Viennese architectural Modernism through the story of Koerner's father, painter Henry Koerner, who escaped Vienna after Adolf Hitler's annexation of Austria. Part documentary, part personal narrative, part dream sequence, the film explores themes of home, landscape, memory, trauma, repetition, and exile. The film began streaming on Amazon Prime in 2022. A new German version of the film, titled Wohnungswanderung,is underway. A director's cut was screen May 7 2024 as the inaugural film presentation at the newly expanded Wien Museum.