AFTER YOUR DECREES

A family project: Artur produced a film à clef about the childhood of his wife Maria, played here by her niece Sharon. However, as a reading of his autobiography would at least suggest, there is a lot of young Artur and his struggle for sheer survival in little Ruth’s saga too – her fate in German-occupied Poland, her cross-country flight from the murderous, all-consuming anti-Semitism of the Nazi henchmen. Brauner’s choice of director for this indeed very personal work is also interesting: with Hoffman he brought in a specialist for historical spectacle, one who possessed the ability to lend even disjointed scenarios and chamber drama-like situations massive gravitas.