A Letter to Mother

SCREENINGS

Neues Kino Theater, Basel Switzerland (2013)
Chicago YIVO Summer Festival of Yiddish Culture (2011)
Paramount Theater at Emerson College, Boston (2011)
Stockholm Jewish Film Festival (2006)
Jerusalem Film Festival (2005)
Toronto Jewish Film Festival (2003)

RESTORED BY NCJF

A Letter to Mother's tale of family disintegration and poverty serves as a metaphor for the displacements facing European Jews in 1939. One of the last Yiddish films made in Poland before the Nazi invasion, the film tells the story of a mother's persistent efforts to support her family. While her husband lives in America, Dobrish struggles to care for her three children in pre-WWI Polish Ukraine. After her family is pulled apart by severe poverty and the turmoil of war, Dobrish and her family make their way to New York and turn to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in search of a brighter future.

Released on September 14, 1939, two weeks after the German blitzkrieg over Poland, this film opened to packed audiences at the Belmont Theater in New York. Hailed by the New York Times as one of the best Yiddish films to reach America, A Letter to Mother was the highest grossing Yiddish film of its time.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"A Letter to Mother was director Joe Green's last film and his favorite from among his own films... may convey something of the flavor of Green's childhood."
-J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds

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