David’s First Picks to Watch at SJFF

The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is up and running for its 30th season! Here are my thoughts on two incredible films showcasing the power of humanity through adversity.

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The Most Precious of Cargoes (La plus précieuse des marchandises)

How can one tell a story that contains horrific human atrocity while simultaneously showing us the nature of love that beats within each human heart? Is it possible to show that even the heartless have a heart? Such stories do exist, and they have for thousands of years—in the form of parables. Often conflated with its literary cousins, the fable and the fairy tale, a parable is a simple story that expresses a universal truth about human behavior or belief. According to the 19th century translator of Aesop’s Fables, George Fyler Townsend, the defining characteristic of a parable is: 

The presence of a subtext suggesting how a person should behave or what he should believe. Aside from providing guidance and suggestions for proper conduct in one's life, parables frequently use metaphorical language which allows people to more easily discuss difficult or complex ideas. Parables express an abstract argument by means of using a concrete narrative which is easily understood. 

The Most Precious of Cargoes is a film that allows people to confront such “difficult and complex” ideas. This latest offering from French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius (Academy Award-winning director of 2011’s The Artist) adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s acclaimed novel, La plus précieuse des marchandises, has a lot to say about both the hatred and the love that co-exist within the human heart. What transports this parable-as-movie into a truly aesthetic experience is the beautifully rendered hand-drawn style animation by the incredible Julien Grande.

The story is a simple one: Set in Poland during World War II, a crushingly poor woodcutter lives with his wife in a small, snow-covered village. They are old and have no children, yet the wife yearns for one. Every day, as she collects wood for the fire, she prays to a god that she feels exists in the trains that daily pass through the woods. Little does she know (but the audience does) that these trains are transporting their horrific “cargo” to Auschwitz.

One snowy day, as if in answer to the wife’s prayers, a baby is thrown from the train. The woman finds the child, sees it as a gift from the god she prayed to, and pledges to raise it. She brings the precious cargo home, only to be admonished by her husband. He refuses to help in the rescuing of the Jewish baby––identified by the prayer shawl used as a swaddling blanket—describing the innocent child as a “heartless beast.” The wife defies her anti-semitic husband (and the entire village) with the aforementioned expression that resonates throughout the film: “Even the heartless have a heart.” As the story progresses, the wife’s sense of maternal love and her unwavering commitment to the child exposes both the depths of human compassion and the harrowing cost of hatred. 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival—the Pearl Anniversary. SJFF uses the metaphor of the pearl to describe this year’s cinematic offerings:

Like a pearl formed through resilience and transformation, the Seattle Jewish Film Festival has spent 30 years illuminating powerful stories that shine through history’s darkest moments and celebrate the triumphs of Jewish life, culture and cinema.

The Most Precious of Cargoes absolutely shines like a pearl as it illuminates a deeply human story that cannot be solely defined as a tale about the Holocaust. In an interview at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius stated that while the Holocaust is a context to the film, it is “first and foremost a wonderful story.” In other words, a timeless parable that reverberates with the enduring power of love over hate while transcending the historical boundaries of its horrifying context. 

Through the gorgeous artwork of Julien Grande, we are magically transported into the realm of timeless storytelling—a haunting dreamscape of image and sound. One could not find a more poignant example of how the power and the beauty of animation can be used to tell a story that is tragic, yet, humanely uplifting at the end. 

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Running on Sand

Nominated for the 2023 Israeli Academy Award for Best Film, Running on Sand is both an engaging comedy of mistaken identity and a poignant tale of the refugee’s plight. Aumari (played by the utterly charming Congo-born actor, Chancela Mongoza) is an Eritrean refugee living in Israel where he works as a restaurant dishwasher in the coastal city of Netyana. Although Aumari has been living legally in Israel for five years, he faces deportation after a raid on the apartment he shares with other African refugees by the Israeli equivalent to ICE. 

As he tries to plead his case to the overzealous immigration authorities, he manages to escape their custody in the local airport. While running through the bustling crowds, Aumari is mistaken for a professional Nigerian soccer player brought to Israel to save the struggling Maccabi Netanya football club. Despite having no soccer experience, Aumari becomes the hope of the franchise and starts to reinvigorate the rather lack-luster team and their perennially disappointed fanbase. Amid his rallying the team, he becomes smitten with the team owner’s daughter (who is also the team’s CEO) and continually worries that his true identity will be uncovered. Mixed in with this comedic tale of mistaken identity and the eventual triumph of an underdog sports team is the harrowing plight of the refugee. 

An oft-quoted command from Hebrew scripture is cited by various characters, Eritrean and Jewish, that becomes a motif throughout the film: "Love the stranger…”

Running on Sand explores this sentiment from multiple perspectives and exposes the challenges and, yes, the racist hypocrisies revolving around the sentiment of “loving the stranger.” A central aspect of Jewish identity is the supposed understanding of the refugee’s plight based upon generations of themselves being castaways and constant “strangers in a strange land.” This film uses both humor and heart to shed light on refugees’ and asylum seekers’ struggles in Israel. 

Although released before the current situation in Gaza, with thousands of Palestinian innocents caught in the crossfire, it is especially moving to see Israeli films dealing with the issues and challenges of living up to their own religious credo of  “love the stranger.” Like the central metaphor of the film —the difficulty of running in sand—it is difficult, but not impossible, to reach a final, humane destination.   

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More to come from SJFF as David and Rachel report back!