STORK OF HOPE

ASIOFILM - as PROD

Drama - Completed 2024


    • Year of production
    • 2024
    • Genres
    • Drama
    • Countries
    • ISRAEL
    • Languages
    • BELARUSSIAN, RUSSIAN, GERMAN, YIDDISH
    • Budget
    • 1 - 3 M$
    • Duration
    • 108 mn
    • Synopsis
    • «Stork of hope»
      The film tells the story of two Jewish brothers who were separated by the war. In the early days of the war, our heroes blend in with a crowd of refugees walking away from the capital in search of salvation. A convoy of refugees is shot down by a German fighter plane. The mother is killed and the brothers are left alone. The only thing that remains with them is a family photograph. The boys enter a German hospital and find many of their peers there. They are kept in inhuman conditions - hunger, cold, lack of sleep and rest. There is an irreconcilable struggle between the children for a piece of bread, and as a result of another conflict the brothers are robbed of their only treasure - a photograph. Each of the brothers gets half of it. These scraps will help them to recognise each other decades later. The fate of the children in the hospital is to become donors for German soldiers. But the doctor receives orders to round up all the Jewish children in the hospital and send them to a concentration camp, as Jewish blood cannot be donated to an Aryan. At this point, the brothers' paths diverge. On the way to the "last journey" the convoy with the children is intercepted by partisans. They distribute the children to families in different villages. One of the brothers ends up in a Belarusian peasant family. It is through the eyes of this boy that the viewer sees all further events. The fate of the second brother remains unknown until the very end of the film. The peasants take the boy in and call him by his son's name. The child becomes their kin. One day the Nazis come to their house, suspicious that they are hiding a Jewish boy. An imminent and brutal reprisal ensues. Partisans are watching the tragic events and decide to engage in a deliberately unequal clash. Against the backdrop of a blazing farmhouse, a brutal battle ensues. The boy escapes from the fire and machine-gun bursts in a well. This is where our hero's vivid memories end, and we see the old man travelling to meet his much-wanted brother. And they meet, just like the two halves of a torn photograph they have carried through life.