A Wing and a Prayer

Description

WINNER Best Documentary Ft. Lauderdale Int’l Film Festival

“[A Wing and a Prayer] tells the story of how a few idealists effected change despite great obstacles.” ANA VECIANA-SUAREZ, The Miami Herald

“Boaz Dvir succeeds in bringing an obscure but signal period of history out of the shadows.” J.R. HAFER, 20th Century Aviation Magazine

“I am delighted that at long last the story has been told for posterity.” SMOKY SIMON, president of World Machal, Jerusalem

“The film’s best parts are the interviews—finding out how these clever guys outsmarted feckless U.S. government officials, and what happened when they returned home.”
MIRIAM ELMAN, Syracuse University political science associate professor

Educational Screenings

Northwestern University

Synopsis

A WING AND A PRAYER tells the story of WWII aviators who risked their lives and U.S. citizenships in 1948 to prevent what they viewed as a second Holocaust. Featuring exclusive interviews with the operation’s key members, including their leader, Israel Aerospace Industries founder Al Schwimmer.

Schwimmer masterminded a feat so clandestine and complex, it remains mostly unknown to this day. He convinced his recruits – Jews and Christians who thought they were done fighting after WWII – to put everything on the line to save Israel’s 600,000 residents.

Director

Boaz Dvir is an award-winning filmmaker directed Jessie’s Dad (available on Hulu, Amazon and many other streaming sites), which captures an uneducated truck driver’s transformation into a child-protection activist; and Discovering Gloria, which recounts the emergence of an average inner-city schoolteacher into a trailblazing innovator. A Penn State assistant professor, Dvir is in post-production on Cojot, which tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who takes history into his own hands. Dvir also taught at the University of Florida. Lifetime and Investigation Discovery have incorporated footage from Dvir’s documentaries, which have received coverage by the Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Post, Haaretz and The Miami Herald.