MR ZWILLING AND MRS ZUCKERMANN

Carte Blanche/ Ronald Trisch: “This documentary about the day-to-day life of Herr Zwilling and Frau Zuckermann, shown in takes that are sometimes long but never boring, is totally without phoney nostalgia or artificial pathos. The pair’s reminiscences are brought into connection with episodes in the Jewish community in the Czernowitz of today, a city slowly coming back to life after the end of the Soviet era. The film was being shot around the time goEast was launched.“ Ronald Trisch The city of Czernowitz in western Ukraine was once a centre of Jewish culture in the Bukovina, a mountainous frontier region historically populated by a mixture of peoples. At times, the Jewish inhabitants comprised half of the entire population. But very few Jews survived the deportation in 1941, on the orders of Germany and Romania, to the death camps of Transnistria. The film is built around Herr Zwilling and Frau Zuckermann, two of the few remaining Jews who were born in the Czernowitz of the old days. They are linked by the German language as well as by the bonds of friendship. Every evening, Herr Zwilling pays a visit to ninety-year-old Frau Zuckermann. They talk about old times, shared experiences, politics and literature, and day-to-day concerns. “Herr Zwilling, my knight without fear or reproach, has been visiting me for the past six years,” says Frau Zuckermann. “And every evenings he brings ill tidings. And it’s my job to persuade him that things will look brighter tomorrow!” “Unfortunately I’m a pessimist who’s proved right almost always,” says Herr Zwilling. “And I won’t let that pass, not for the world!” Frau Zuckermann retorts...