April 7, 2025–Millions of Americans marched in the streets this past weekend on April 5th to protest the Trump administration’s reckless abuse of power, saying “Hands Off!” the Constitution and hands off our inherent rights in America. One only needs to look to the not-so-long-ago past to see explicit patterns in how a totalitarian government grabs power by taking the power from others. These two films are streaming through April 13th via the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, and I highly recommend them for a sobering reminder of how things can go wrong very quickly.
These and other movies are streaming at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival until April 13th.
Never Alone (Ei koskaan yksin)
I admit I never learned much about Finland’s role in World War II. Stuck between a rock (the Nazis) and a hard place (their neighbor the Soviet Union), the Finnish government allied themselves with Nazi Germany, hoping that their presence would keep the Russians at bay. “Never Alone” refers to the slogan on chilling propaganda posters in Helsinki, showing Nazi and Finnish soldiers grinning and shaking hands, but it also reflects the strength of the local Jewish community trying to protect their own. A Jewish businessman named Abraham Stiller, a leader of Helsinki’s small Jewish community, uses his standing to try to shield recent Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany from being deported by the Nazis to certain death. What makes this film especially moving is that Stiller’s intentions are good, but he’s a bit naïve with some of his actions, potentially making things worse for those he is trying to help. The cinematography in the film is notably great looking—so much so that a scene as ethereally framed as gauzy white room with a red Nazi banner in the window and a Nazi leader playing piano is memorably both gorgeous and shudder-inducing.
Death of Zygielbojm (Śmierć Zygielbojma) (2021)Death of Zygielbojm (Śmierć Zygielbojma)
If you are infuriated about the mainstream news media overreporting some stories while completely ignoring the urgency of others, this sobering film will show you the practice is nothing new. In May 1943, an exiled Polish political activist was found dead by suicide in London, leaving a note protesting the world’s failure to act against the mass extermination of the Jewish people by the Nazis. His name was Szmul Zygielbojm, and he was a Jewish Socialist that was an advisor to the exiled Polish government. This drama follows the attempts of a young British journalist investigating Zygielbojm and his death, a framing device that honestly feels a bit like filler. The film works best and is at its most impactful in its flashbacks to Zygielbojm’s increasingly desperate attempts to get the word out to the major British newspapers and leaders, especially when he finds out his own wife and son have been sent to the Warsaw ghetto. Knowing in hindsight that the media was barely mentioning what was happening to European Jews in 1943, a full two years before the war ended, is absolutely devastating.
