UK Jewish Film Festival 2009 presents UK Premiere: Father’s Footsteps (Comme ton Pere)

Dir. Marco Carmel | France | 2007 | 95 mins | French with English Subtitles
Starring Gad Elmaleh and Yaël Abecassis

Arriving in France from Israel in 1968, the Maïmons join scores of other Algerian and Tunisian Jewish families in Paris’ burgeoning Belleville district. Good-hearted Félix (Gad Elmaleh) reluctantly slips into a secretive life of petty crime to provide for his wife Mireille (Yaël Abecassis) and two boys, until he meets Sephardi gangster Serge (Richard Berry), from the same Tunisian village as Mireille. Serge treats the Maïmons as kin, but has bigger plans for Félix’s criminal career.

Told from the point of view of 11-year-old Michel (Jules-Angelo Bigarnet),Father’s Footsteps is a captivating study in loss of innocence and the power of ethnic allegiance,set against the backdrop of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In an eerie subplot, Michel stumbles upon an abandoned hideaway littered with Nazi relics, bringing past and present tribulations face to face. Elmaleh and Abecassis are exceptional as the beleaguered parents in this classy debut from Israeli director Marco Carmel. 

Tracy-Ann Oberman, actress and writer, will introduce the screening.

SCREENING WITH:

Schlimazeltov! (U)
Dir.Christopher Thomas Allen | UK I 2009 I English

Winner – The Pears Foundation UKJFF Short Film Fund 2009

Maybe some people are just born unlucky? This documentary film weaves together a diverse collection of voices from London’s Jewish community to explore the concept of “luck” or “mazel”.From global economics to the timeless searching for love, this humorous and philosophical piece of visual poetry navigates the boundaries between religion and superstition to ask how the invisible hand of mazel has touched us all.