In 1936, at the age of five, Manfred Kirchheimer fled Nazi Germany with his parents and struggled to make a new home in New York. Fifty years later, he draws upon interviews with family and friends (and uses quotes from Hitler’s Mein Kampf) to make this deeply personal and evocative documentary about the 20,000 German Jewish emigrants who similarly escaped the Holocaust and took refuge in Washington Heights, creating a thriving community under the shadow of the George Washington Bridge known as Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson. Kirchheimer’s masterful film is born of intimate experience and anguished reckoning, a shared sense of fear, guilt, and hope.
Director: Manfred Kirchheimer
Cinematographer: James Callanan
BFC JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL SPONSORED BY EDWIN & DORIS COHEN
