Inside Hana's Suitcase

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      A documentary by Larry Weinstein. Featuring George Brady and Fumiko Ishioka. In English, Japanese, Czech, and German with English subtitles. Rated G. Opens Friday, November 13, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

      Inside Hana's Suitcase, a Holocaust story with several unusual twists, digs into the real-life saga that inspired the bestselling children's book Hana's Suitcase. The book, by Karen Levine, started as a CBC Radio documentary and saw numerous print editions this decade, plus CD spinoffs and a theatre version.


      Watch clips from the film Inside Hana's Suitcase.

      The lovingly told film is a rare nonmusic feature for Canadian documentary veteran Larry Weinstein, who specializes in profiles of composers ranging from Beethoven to Kurt Weill. Indeed, the intense thread of modern Czech music, augmented by original work from Alexina Louie and Alex Pauk, runs through the tale of siblings pulled into the vortex of Adolf Hitler's insanity. String-heavy sounds bubble under deft, nonspeaking reenactments in black and white and help convey the genteel flavour of life as enjoyed by the Bradys, a middle-class family with a small shop in central Czechoslovakia.

      When the Germans invaded, they pounced on the Bradys, the only Jewish family in the small Moravian town. Young George and his little sister, Hana, soon saw their parents taken away, and they were subsequently sent to the transit camp called Terezí­n, then on to Auschwitz. Decades later, Hana's suitcase made its way on loan to a Holocaust centre in Japan, where teacher Fumiko Ishioka led a band of children investigating the roots of the genocide. Eventually, Ishioka discovered that George was still alive and had raised a large, loving family in the Toronto area.

      George Brady makes a thoughtfully articulate guide for this affecting journey, whose stops in hell are mitigated by frequent visits with fresh-faced kids—in Canada, Japan, and the Czech Republic—who relate the rest of the saga with the right combination of frankness and optimism. The film itself sparks feelings of hope for humanity while reminding us that the bullies in life always seem to seek out the gentlest souls for special treatment.

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