The Paris-born director Yolande Zauberman moves between documentary and feature film, video and narrative art. Her works break taboos, explore power, sexuality and exclusion, and give space to marginalised voices. She gained international attention with multi-award-winning films including Would You Have Sex with an Arab?, which premiered in Venice, and M, which won a César Award for Best Documentary.
What was your starting point for „Les juifs riches“?
One evening, my cousins and got together (something we never do). We watched home movies, bar mitzvahs, weddings, circumcisions, etc. I saw the world of my childhood, that of our parents and their friends. The men’s faces were hard, determined and proud. They sometimes wore sunglasses. No one knows how difficult it was to be their children. I thought it would be quite moving to tell their stories. And immediately, the title, „Les Juifs Riches“ came to my mind.
After the war, they arrived with nothing. They had lost everything, their families, their homes, their language.
They survived with such strength and without a word most of them didn’t tell their children anything. They gritted their teeth. They did what they could. Between the stories, the memory lapses, and the jokes, you get a sense of what it’s like to be Jewish. Or at least, to be me.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one in particular?
The Jewish jokes. The moment when Helene Lapiower sings „Reyzele.“ The shot where my first husband’s uncle, wearing a top hat, leans toward the Great Rabbi…
I feel like I’m in a Scorsese film.
What do you like about the short form?
In contemporary art, we give pieces of answers to big questions…
I liked that we made this film in my base-ment-where I set up an editing room.
We had a feeling of ease, of fluidit…..
Sometimes you have to live a whole lifetime for a simple moment to occur.
What else can I say?
In Poland, in the cemetery in Lublin where my ancestors are buried, there was nothing left, just a few broken gravestones. I, who am neither religious nor attached to stones, stepped forward and introduced myself:
My name is Yolande Zauberman, lam the daughter of Aaron Joseph Zauberman and Maria Granatstajn (I have never been able to spell that name cor-rectly), I come from you… your graves will only exist in my memory.
Les Juifs Riches is something like this, stories without graves, turned towards life.
It moves me that the world premiere of the film is taking place in Berlin. We are all children of this story.
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