Australia, NZ and worldwide Jewish news that matters
J-Wire has ten double passes for Australian director Tony Krawitz’s latest film “Dead Europe”. To win simply send an email from the address you used to subscribe to J-Wire. Valid at any participating cinema….
Comments received without a full name will not be considered
Email addresses are NEVER published! All comments are moderated. J-Wire will publish considered comments by people who provide a real name and email address. Comments that are abusive, rude, defamatory or which contain offensive language will not be published
Apr-23 9:30pm SBS-World Movies: The Conference
On Jan 20, 1942, leading representatives of the Nazi regime meet in a villa in Berlin-Wannsee. Read more
Apr-23 8pm SBS-TV: Great British Railway Journeys
Michael Portillo’s Bradshaw-inspired rail tour of London continues in Hampstead, where, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, a ground-breaking Jewish doctor found refuge. Read more
Apr-25 11:45pm SBS-TV: Auschwitz – One Day
This documentary tells the story of a typical day in 1944 in the ‘death factory’ at Auschwitz from the viewpoint of victims – but it also allows insights into the mindset of the perpetrators. Read more
‘Dead Europe’
It’s a horrible title for a movie. But then ‘Dead Europe’ is a horrible movie.
Greek-Australian photographer Isaac Raftis has been invited to Athens
to attend an exhibition of his work. His family doesn’t want him to go.
His mother warns of a family curse. His alcoholic father refuses to talk
about his former life in Greece.
On his trip to a sordid, depraved Europe, the family’s hidden secret unravels.
Struggling with the guilt of their father’s wartime atrocity, Isaac’s brother says,
“Don’t you wish that not a single Jew ever walked the face of the earth?”
Now he might be drugged out and desperate when he says this.
But it’s the message that sticks, not the messenger.
(So now they blame the Jews for making them feel bad about what happened to the Jews.)
And the Muslim woman who links Israel’s ‘cruel’ treatment of the Palestinians
with the Holocaust – “The victim always carries the hate,” she says.
Isaac may dismiss her comments, but it’s the premise of Israel’s sins against the Palestinians
that sticks.
And the Jewish characters? A sleazy Hungarian whose family was wiped out,
but who now ”thrives” thanks to his child prostitution ring. And another one who smacks his wife.
And all this made by a director with the surname Krawitz.
Whatever his intended message on antisemitism and the decay of Europe, sadly, it’s an anti-Semitic message that will stick.