Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

On Wednesday, August 13 the library will show Edges of the Lord, a 95 minutes long, R-rated, movie from 2001. The movie was made in Poland, written and directed by Polish director Yurek Bogayevicz, but is in English, with the few short Yiddish and Hebrew lines. The story follows Romek, played by Haley Joel Osment, a 12-year-old Jewish boy who hides with a family of Catholic peasant farmers to escape the Nazis. It shows country living in the 1940′s Poland in somewhat romanticized way. But not too much, as Romek encounters not only the predictable folk-anti-Semitism, but also the brutality of children and teenagers (including a rape scene.) Being a Holocaust related movie it has plenty of sad and heavy scenes. These are somewhat balanced by the depiction of the countryside and the kind of innocent fun only children can experience. Willem Dafoe plays the local Catholic priest, who tries to defend Romek and others, but I have to admit with limited success.

This is the first movie in our series I did not find a proper trailer on YouTube or anywhere else and I could not make my own either. I found this two and a half minute segment in English with Chinese(?) and Turkish subtitles, but I could not embed it in this post. Then there is this two minute trailer, but is in German, so I just provide a link to it. Enjoy both/either.