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We’d like to let you know about a very special documentary screening at Kino Babylon Mitte, Berlin, on 25 August: L’chaim! To life!

The film portraits Chaim Lubelski, an orthodox Jew and successful businessman in New York who jet-sets to St. Tropez. When his mother, a Holocaust survivor, is in need of care, he returns to Antwerp to look after her.

Trailer

In his feature-film debut, producer and director Elkan Spiller presents his cousin, Chaim, as a rebellious, charming maverick – a man who tries to relieve his parents’ pain with courage, humor and love. The film is an emphatic look into a life full of absurdity and a profound sense of humanity. It is the remarkable portrait of the son of a Holocaust survivor, which reveals the lasting effects of the parent generation’s trauma.

“Rarely have I seen a documentary that has filled me equally with so much laughter and tears. L’Chaim strikes a deep chord in the human soul and with Jewish humor, all the while telling one of the most compelling Survivor biographies I know. Protagonist Chaim Lubelski is a lonely, anarchistic cowboy, a reincarnation of Groucho Marx, and a stoned philosopher who touchingly and selflessly cares for his mother, a woman who survived the horrors of the Holocaust. For me, L’Chaim is a milestone in story of the ‘second generation’. The roughness and shamelessness of the protagonist – but more so the film itself – shocks and liberates. Those who see L’Chaim! To Life! won’t soon forget it.” (filmmaker Dani Levy about the film)

L’Chaim! To Life! will be screened at Kino Babylon on 25 August. Director Elkan Spiller and protagonist Chaim Lubelski as well as the godmothers of cinema, author Sabine Kray, and author and jazz singer, Dotschy Reinhardt, will be present. Shelly Kupferberg will moderate the evening.

Further screenings on 27 August, 8 pm, 29 August, 30. August, and 1. September, 18.30 pm.