Life Is Beautiful is a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, who co-wrote the film with Vincenzo Cerami. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who employs his imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. The film was partially inspired by the book In the End, I Beat Hitler by Rubino Romeo Salmonì and by Benigni's father, who spent two years in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II.
Alan Wolf Arkin was an American actor, filmmaker and musician. In a career spanning seven decades, he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for six Emmy Awards.
Jurek Becker was a Polish-born German writer, screenwriter and East German dissident. His most famous novel is Jacob the Liar, which has been made into two films. He lived in Łódź during World War II for about two years and survived the Holocaust.
Frank Paul Beyer was a German film director. In East Germany he was one of the most important film directors, working for the state film monopoly DEFA and directed films that dealt mostly with the Nazi era and contemporary East Germany. His film Trace of Stones was banned for 20 years in 1966 by the ruling SED. His 1975 film Jacob the Liar was the only East German film ever nominated for an Academy Award. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 until his death he mostly directed television films.
The Believer is a 2001 American drama film written and directed by Henry Bean in his feature directorial debut, based on a story by Bean and Mark Jacobson. Starring Ryan Gosling, Billy Zane, Theresa Russell, and Summer Phoenix, the film follows Daniel Balint, a Jew who becomes a neo-Nazi. The film is loosely based on the true story of Dan Burros, a member of the American Nazi Party and the New York branch of the United Klans of America who died by suicide after being revealed as Jewish by a reporter from The New York Times.
Noel is a 2004 American Christmas-themed drama film written by David Hubbard and directed by Chazz Palminteri. It stars Penélope Cruz, Susan Sarandon, Paul Walker, Alan Arkin, Daniel Sunjata and an uncredited Robin Williams. The film focuses on intersecting storylines taking place on Christmas Eve in New York City. It was filmed partly in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Everything Is Illuminated is a 2005 American biographical comedy-drama film, written and directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, and was the debut film of Liev Schreiber both as a director and as a screenwriter.
The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.
Mother Night is a 1996 American romantic war drama film produced and directed by Keith Gordon. It is based on Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 novel of the same name.
Jacob the Liar is a 1969 novel written by the East German Jewish author Jurek Becker. The German original title is Jakob der Lügner. Becker was awarded the Heinrich-Mann Prize (1971) and the Charles Veillon Prize (1971) after the publication of his bestseller.
Adam Resurrected is a 2008 American-German-Israeli drama film directed by Paul Schrader and written by Noah Stollman based on a 1969 novel of the same name by Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk. The Hebrew title literally translates to Adam, Son of a Dog.
Hannah Taylor-Gordon is a retired English actress. She made her film debut in the 1993 film The House of the Spirits. She is best known for her role as Anne Frank in the TV miniseries Anne Frank: The Whole Story for which she received both an Emmy and a Golden Globe nomination.
The Golem: How He Came into the World is a 1920 German silent horror film and a leading example of early German Expressionism. Director Paul Wegener, who co-directed the film with Carl Boese and co-wrote the script with Henrik Galeen based on Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel, stars as the titular creature, a being in Jewish folklore created from clay. Photographer Karl Freund went on to work on the 1930s classic Universal horror films years later in Hollywood.
Train of Life is a 1998 tragicomedy film by France, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel and Romania made in the French language. It tells the story of an eastern European Jewish village's plan to escape the Holocaust.
The Odessa File is a 1974 thriller film, adapted from the 1972 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, about a reporter's investigation into the ODESSA: an organisation set up to protect former members of the SS in post-Second World War West Germany. The film stars Jon Voight, Mary Tamm, Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell and was directed by Ronald Neame, with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was the only film that the Schell siblings made together.
Jacob the Liar is a 1975 war drama film directed by Frank Beyer, adapted by Beyer and Jurek Becker from the latter's novel of the same title. Set in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust, the film centers on Jakob Heym, a Polish Jew who attempts to raise the morale inside the ghetto by sharing encouraging rumors that he claims he has heard on an (imaginary) radio. The film was a co-production between East Germany and Czechoslovakia. It premiered on East German television on 22 December 1974, and was released theatrically on 18 April 1975.
Defiance is a 2008 American war film directed by Edward Zwick, and starring Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski, Liev Schreiber as Zus Bielski, Jamie Bell as Asael Bielski, and George MacKay as Aron Bielski. Set during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany, the film's screenplay by Clayton Frohman and Zwick was based on Nechama Tec's 1993 book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, an account of the eponymous group led by Polish Jewish brothers who saved and recruited Jews in Belarus during World War II.
In Darkness is a dual-perspective 2011 Polish drama film written by David F. Shamoon and directed by Agnieszka Holland. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards.
Fading Gigolo is a 2013 American comedy film directed, written by, and starring John Turturro. The film, co-starring Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara, Vanessa Paradis, Liev Schreiber, Loan Chabanol and Eugenia Kuzmina premiered in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. It was given a limited release on April 18, 2014, and received mixed reviews.
There are several major aspects of humor related to the Holocaust: humor of the Jews in Nazi Germany and in Nazi concentration and extermination camps, a specific kind of "gallows humor"; German humor on the subject during the Nazi era; the appropriateness of this kind of off-color humor in modern times; modern anti-Semitic sick humor.
