Inside Hana’s Suitcase

Inside Hana’s Suitcase (Director: Larry Weinstein): Inside Hana’s Suitcase is beau­ti­fully crafted and easily one of the best films at Hot Docs this year. It’s based upon the the inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed book “Hana’s Suitcase” written by Karen Levine.

It’s a holo­caust story but don’t let that fool you into thinking it will be another depressing doc. Through a series of dra­matic re-enactments the film tells the real-life story of two Jewish chil­dren from Czechoslovakia, George and Hana Brady.

Things shift from the 1930s and 1940s world of Czechoslovakia to present-day Japan at the Tokyo Holocaust Museum. A suit­case with the name Hana Brady painted on it is delivered to the museum where Fumiko Ishioka and her stu­dents dis­cover that it came from Auschwitz. They examine the con­tents of the suit­case and learn as much as they can about Hana’s life and the war. Their journey leads to the dis­covery that Hana’s brother George is alive and living in Toronto. From there the story con­tinues to get more and more interesting.

Throughout the film, chil­dren from around the world tell Hana’s story and the les­sons they’ve learned from her exper­i­ence. I thought this was pure genius because it provides the audi­ence with a child’s per­spective of the war in a way that is powerful and full of hope.

Larry Weinstein’s dir­ec­tion is bril­liant and puts the film in the same league as last year’s Academy Award-winning film, Man On Wire. The period music and spe­cial effects trans­port the viewer back to the war while anim­a­tion of Hana’s draw­ings enrich the moviegoing experience.

Inside Hana’s Suitcase is a film about hope that chil­dren and adults can learn from and enjoy on many dif­ferent levels. I highly recom­mend this film and hope it gets a the­at­rical release.

Update: Inside Hana’s Suitcase was named as one of the top ten audi­ence favour­ites at Hot Docs this year.

Official site of the film

(8/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs09, holocaust, worldwar2