The Last Jew from Drohobych

Description

World Premiere Vienna Int’l Film Festival

Synopsis

Alfred Schreyer will tell you he’s the only surviving pre-WWII Jewish resident in Drohobych, Ukraine. He’s likely right. Schreyer was a student of the eminent Polish writer, Bruno Schulz in the 1930s, survived the forced labor and concentration camps of the Nazi occupation and became a singer and violinist in the local Cinema Lobby Orchestra, a truly unique Soviet tradition in cinema culture. With his life story chronicling a century of resilience triumphing over tragedy in Drohobych, Alfred Schreyer is living history.

Director

Paul Rosdy

Born and raised in Vienna, Paul Rosdy worked in the tourism industry and travelled the world, in the 1980s, for American Express. When he had enough he moved to Vancouver, Canada, were he completed a film curriculum. His first film was called You Don’t Look For Street Signs When You’re In A Jungle (1991), followed by Release Day (1992). In New York he worked with Joan Grossman on several short films and then they released The Port of Last Resort – Zuflucht in Shanghai in 1998, about the 20,000 Jewish refugees who escaped the Nazis for Shanghai. Then he turned to Central South East Europe to film New World (2005), a trip through Central Europe, from the old world to the new, and also wrote the screenplay Emir & Merima, a contemporary interpretation of a tale in an oral ballad from Bosnia & Herzegovina. In 2009, Rosdy wrote and directed Cernob, Barevn¡, a Czech production about the change in time and space in the northern bohemian brown coal fields. In 2012 The Last Jew from Drohobych is being released. Paul Rosdy lives with his wife Ivanna and his stepdaughter Victoria in Drohobych and Vienna.