The Optimists

AWARDS

PEACE PRIZE, HONORABLE MENTION International Forum of New Cinema Berlin International Film Festival (2001)

BEST JEWISH DOCUMENTARY Jerusalem Film Festival

The Optimists tells the virtually unknown story of how the fifty-thousand Jews living in Bulgaria survived the Holocaust despite intensive Nazi efforts to deport them to death camps. They didn't die because Bulgarian Christians and Muslims found ways to protect Jews from their would-be murderers. Ordinary people and organizations stood up for their Jewish friends and neighbors. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, certain Parliament members, Communists, trade unions, professional guilds, and the Jewish community itself all helped defeat the Nazis' orders for mass deportations and the Bulgarian governments attempts to comply with those orders.

Bulgaria's experience offers valuable insight into how we can mobilize to protect human rights and civil rights. It is not only a Jewish story but a universal one, powerful in its ability to inform and inspire all audiences. In awarding the Peace Prize to The Optimists, the Berlin jury explained: "We were extremely moved and fascinated by your film because of the chapter of history it tells (which is still not well known), because of the characters it portrays, and also by the film as such and by its filmic quality."

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"(Comforty) interviews survivors who awaited deportation only to be sent back, helpless witnesses of those government roundups, and most poignantly, a surviving member of the Bulgarian Orthodox church whose civil disobedience saved thousands of lives. Amid the voluminous recollections, a novel thesis emerges: Bulgarian compassion and religious tolerance, tempered by a half-century-long Turkish occupation, staved off tragedy. Questionable as a theory of history, but as a human sentiment, it's touching to behold."
-James Crawford The Village Voice

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