The Azrieli Series Short Films

Directed by: Jason Charters, Liam Romalis
Featuring: Canadian Holocaust Survivors
Format: HD
Year: 2016
Produced by: Riddle Films in association with The Azrieli Foundation
Distributed by: The Azrieli Foundation

We were commissioned by the Azrieli Foundation to produce a series of short films to accompany the Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs.  The memoirs are written by Canadian survivors and each film introduces the author and includes an animated excerpt from their book.

Elsa Thon’s family had a tradition of storytelling and her memoir is replete with poems, asides, fables, and family stories. It is a testament to her wit, intelligence, humour, love, and, most of all, courage. At sixteen, Elsa was an apprentice in a photographic studio when the Nazis occupied her town of Pruszków, Poland. Later, she was recruited by the Underground, supplied with false papers and helped to escape from the Krakow ghetto. “Passing” as a gentile, she was eventually betrayed and spent the rest of the war in forced labour camps. If Only It Were Fiction is a striking coming-of-age story of a young woman who, despite her deep belief in destiny, refuses to bow to her fate as a Jew in war-torn Poland.