U.S. filmmakers craft documentary on genocide survivors

Imagine a movie about genocide that’s, well, sort of uplifting. That was the goal of two former University of Pennsylvania classmates who set out to make a documentary marrying their Jewish heritage with their modern-day social activism.

The result is “The Last Survivor,” a film that chronicles how four people — survivors of the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur or Congo — rebound from atrocities and find new meaning in their lives.

After debuting in the U.S. this year, the film had its international premiere at the Jerusalem Film Festival this month. Co-directors Michael Pertnoy and Michael Kleiman, both 26, spoke with The Times about how the film has been received in a country with one of the biggest populations of genocide survivors.

Q: Why was it important to you to make a film about genocide that left the audience feeling good at the end? It’s not exactly a feel-good topic.

MP: When we grew up, we learned about the Holocaust in a particular way, with hardened images and archival footage that was numbing. It was hard to put your arms around the enormity of the experience. We were very interested in the capacity of the human spirit to rebuild and move forward. The challenge early on was how to make a film about genocide that isn’t emotionally taxing and makes you feel helpless. Hopefully that was our greatest triumph, to give people the feeling that it isn’t just about loss of life, but about the capacity to move beyond and rebuild life. We hope our film can be a window through which people can talk about issues, but also get involved, rather than feeling hopeless.

Q: Drawing comparisons between the Holocaust and other genocides or conflicts is always controversial. Why did you take that approach?

MK: Holocaust education today feels like ancient history. Sixty years ago feels like a long time to a 16-year-old kid. When they realize this is something that is still happening in the world, it helps make the connection stronger.

Q: So it was a way to make the Holocaust more relevant to younger people?

MP: We wanted the Holocaust to resonate with younger people in a way that connects to their lives today. We didn’t want to overshadow the legacy of the Holocaust. But we wanted to include it in the story we are telling. When people talk about modern genocides, in Darfur, Congo and beyond, the Holocaust isn’t brought into the conversation. It was important to us to include it in the conversation so we can talk about what connects these human atrocities.

Q: Some groups, including some Holocaust survivors, complain that the term ‘genocide’ today is becoming almost devalued because it’s used to describe so many conflicts. Did you run into any of that?

MP: Early on we knew there would be enormous sensitivities from Holocaust survivors. The pushback was emotional. The Congo, for example, has never been called genocide and we are careful to speak about “massacre” or “mass atrocities.” But we don’t differentiate human suffering from one to another. Crimes against humanity are no less bad than genocide.

Q: Israel and the Jewish people obviously have a historic connection to genocide. Does that mean they have a greater obligation to fight against it?

MK: The obligation is a human obligation. I don’t think any one group of people, just because they’ve gone through it, have a special obligation.

MP: I think Israel has done a fantastic job. It has one of the largest Darfuri populations in the world. Thousands of African refugees have come into the country, passing through Muslim countries that wouldn’t accept them. They’ve gone above and beyond what they needed to do.

Q: That’s a more upbeat assessment than even many Israelis would give. There are concerns about Israel’s lack of clear policy on dealing with refugees, long-term detention of refugees, efforts to build a giant fence along Egypt’s border to keep refugees out. After seeing your film recently, one man in the audience said Jews, who were turned away by foreign governments during the Holocaust, should never do the same thing to someone else.

MK: We recognize that the government was not handling it well when Darfuris first started to come to the country. Adam [a Darfur refugee featured in the film who now lives in Israel] was put in a detention center for six months. Then he was on kibbutzim and couldn’t leave. He wanted to go to school and was told he couldn’t. The amazing thing was that he fought the government and won. Now many Darfuri minors are in school. We’re not saying there is no fault to be placed. There were definitely things done wrong. But a lot were corrected.

Q: You’ve spoken about genocide, “ethnic cleansing” and mass atrocities in places like Darfur, Congo, Burma and Somalia. In some people’s minds, it’s not far down that path before you reach a situation like Gaza.

MP: It’s a really complicated situation. Certainly the international community, through the Goldstone report [the product of a United Nations inquiry into allegations of human rights abuses during Israel’s Gaza offensive], considered what’s going on might be considered human rights atrocities. Personally, I don’t think what is going on in Gaza is genocide. As a humanitarian, I’m very sensitive to human suffering. There are a lot of problems with the way Israel is dealing with what’s going on in Gaza. We can do better. The people of Gaza are entitled to basic civil human liberties. But I don’t place Gaza in the same conversation that I place what’s going on in Darfur or Congo.

You’ve said it was a conscious decision to not talk about Palestinians in the film, even editing out one person’s brief comment about them. Did you think you’d take flak for that?

MP: We want to see the time when Jews and Palestinians live side by side. All of us want peace. But I didn’t feel like the Mideast conflict had a place in our film about genocide. It’s a totally different storyline. It would have taken the film in a different direction.

Q: So what’s your next film about? You going to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

MK: The next one is about an organization called One Laptop per Child, which is distributing laptops to children in the developing world. I was in a small village in the Amazon jungle as kids got access to the Internet for the first time. The film explores the idea of the Internet and how it affects the world for better and worse.

edmund.sanders@latimes.com