Review: Docudrama ‘Anne Frank: Then and Now’ brings the story to Palestinian teens

“Anne Frank: Then and Now” may be an oddly structured little docudrama but it makes the most of its eerily cogent message: The words of the famed World War II diarist are as timely today as when first penned by the Jewish teenager while she hid from German occupiers.

To that end, father-son filmmakers Jakov and Dominik Sedlar focus on several Palestinian teens auditioning to play Anne Frank in a proposed Arab-language theatrical retelling of the writer’s thoughts and experiences. (The movie was shot in Gaza, Ramallah and Jaffa in July 2014, around the time of the Israel-Gaza conflict.)

Although this stage production never materialized, it began a vital discussion of the Holocaust among these budding young Arab actresses. The poised and pensive girls seen here alternate between reciting moving passages from Frank’s diary and commenting on such related topics as love, religion and war from a contemporary Muslim perspective. The uneasy state of Israeli-Palestinian relations, occasionally underscored by pointed local imagery, informs these often heartfelt chats.

A nominal framing device involving a Kosovo theater director and a reluctant actress at odds over their own potential stage show based on Frank’s diary adds a bit of concocted, in-the-moment drama.

A stirring visit by film producer Branko Lustig to the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he and Frank were once imprisoned, rounds out this brief but provocative work.

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‘Anne Frank: Then and Now’

In English and Arabic with English subtitles

Not Rated.

Running time: 1 hour, 2 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino

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