Festivals - Sundance Film Festival 2021 : Misha and the wolves directed by Sam Hobkinson will have its world premiere

By Mulder, 31 december 2020

A young orphaned girl survives the Holocaust by fleeing her home in search of her parents, escaping Nazis by sticking to the woods and living with wolves. Author Misha Defonseca’s story is an incredible one, and not just because of the wolves. Her memoir took the world by storm, but fallout with her publisher-turned-detective exposes the shocking truth beneath Misha’s deception. A real-life mystery unfolds, with a slate of characters individually revealing pieces of the puzzle in this stranger-than-fiction revelation.

In the early 1990s, Misha Defonseca broke a 50-year silence. She began to tell friends in the Jewish community of Massachusetts of her terrible experiences as a young girl during the Holocaust: stripped of her identity, and ‘Hidden’ in the house of a Catholic family, she decided to run away, walking east across Europe, eating earthworms and insects, befriending wolves, evading the Nazis and living by her wits in search her deported parents. On hearing this incredible account, local publisher Jane Daniel persuaded Misha to write her story as a memoir.

Before the book was even written, the buzz began. The press picked up the story, Disney bought the film rights and translation rights were being sold around the world. By the time the book was finished, Oprah’s Book Club came calling, and their involvement guaranteed an international bestseller.

Then something strange happened. Misha grew uncooperative and refused to go on the live TV show. Thus began a three-year feud between Jane and Misha that ended in court, with Jane accused of stealing the copyright and withholding royalties. The jury were faced with a Holocaust survivor who had been wronged and found Jane guilty on all counts. The judge ordered Jane to pay damages of $22 million.

In an effort to rebuild her reputation, Jane Daniel went back to her attorney’s research. At the bottom of a file of accounts she found a bank slip, written in Misha’s hand, giving her mother’s maiden name and her own place and date of birth. This was information Misha always claimed not to know, saying her true identity had been lost during the war. If Misha had lied about this, what else in her story might be untrue ?

Misha and the Wolves is a cinematic documentary about truth and lies, about history and imagination and how and why we believe the stories we’re told

Reenactments, interviews, and archival footage stylishly blend to tell a vivid story about truth, deception, and self-preservation in director Sam Hobkinson’s engrossing film. Each peeled-back layer is met with surprise, prompting larger questions as the story twists and turns. Whom do we trust, and what motivates deception? Where does the line blur between victim and perpetrator? Hobkinson brings fresh understanding and perspective to a story that might sound familiar to some, while delivering a gripping plunge for anyone new to the saga of Misha and her wolves.

Synopsis :
A woman's Holocaust memoir takes the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher-turned-detective reveals her as an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.

Misha and the wolves (United Kingdom/Belgium)
Directed by Sam Hobkinson
Produced by Poppy Dixon, Al Morrow, Matthew Wells, Gregory Zalcman, Jürgen Buedts
Executive Producers : Stewart Le Maréchal, Thomas Høegh, Vesna Cudic, Jonny Persey, Adrian Sibley, Mandy Chang, Hayley Reynolds, Martin Pieper, Barbara Truyen
Written by Sam Hobkinson
Music by Nick Foster
Cinematography : Will Pugh
Edited by Peter Norrey
Production companies : Arts Alliance Productions
Distributed by MetFilm Sales
Release date : January 31, 2021 (Sundance)
Running time : 90 minutes

Premiere : jan. 31 - 9:00pm // Second screening : feb. 2 - 4:00pm (local time)

(Source : press release)