SHTTL

On June 24, 1941 a Ukrainian shtetl was invaded by the Nazis as part of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa. Witness the final day of this small Jewish village in one magnificent, unbroken shot through the eyes of a young aspiring filmmaker returning to his home…only to see it disappear into history. —M.G.

SHTTL, set in a fictional Jewish village in Soviet Ukraine in the early summer of 1941, is about the return of one of its youngest citizens, Mendele, who dreams of being a filmmaker. Mendele comes home to a town divided by political, philosophical, religious, and interpersonal concerns, and he reckons with his own sustained grief over the loss of his mother and the traditional expectations of religion from his elders. With the discord influenced by the threat of Soviet and Nazi forces just outside the small village, we witness history on the precipice of evaporating before Mendele’s eyes. Shot mostly in glorious black and white and immersive, virtuosic long takes, all evoking classic filmmaking style, this film is a timely and dense echo of the tragic past into the fraught present. —C.F.