Fighter (2000)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Amir Bar-Lev

Release Date:

24 August 2001 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary

Tagline:

Loyalty, The Limits of Friendship, and Fighting Back.

Plot:

Filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev follows two Czech Holocaust survivors, Jan Weiner and Arnost Lustig, as they revisit Terezin, a labor camp where Arnost was interned for five years and Jan's mother was murdered.

Plot Keywords:

Holocaust Survivor | Friend | Holocaust | Old Age | Holocaust Memories

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

Arnost Lustig	...	Himself
Jan Wiener	...	Himself

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Czech

Color:

Black and White | Color

Company:

Next Wave Films

Moving Documentary

I had not heard of Fighter before, but I saw it in the local library, and picked it up on a whim. I was very surprised by the film which I thought one of the most moving documentaries that I have ever seen. The movie traces the journey of two Jewish Czech WWII survivors, one of whom was at Auschwitz and the other ended the war as a RAF fighter pilot. The personalities of the two men are diamatrically oppossed and it is moving and touching to still hear the anger and sadness in the pilot's voice as he visits the various places where he or his family had suffered during the war. It was frightening to see the footage of Nazi soldiers marching into Czechoslovakia and to understand that the same people who supported the Nazis turned around and supported the Communists, and both parties turned on the Jews for different reasons. The personal experiences of both persons are hard to comprehend and I cannot imagine, in the absence of personal experience, how a person could have such a strong desire to survive. I definitely recommend this film to students of human nature both from the negative angle (hatred, bias, bigotry) and from the positive angle (desire to survive, love, perseverance).