Fighter (2000): A Documentary By Czech Filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev

Yell! Review:

Fighter, a documentary by Czech filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev, follows two Holocaust survivors who met in the U.S. after the war and their eventual return to their native Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic, to follow a certain escapee’s path to freedom. Jan Weiner, who escaped Czechoslovakia and joined the RAF to fight the Nazis, brings his friend Arnost Lustig to the important places of his past with Bar-Lev’s camera recording it all.

Lustig joined the Communist party after the war ended and Weiner was interned in a work-camp for suspected spying for the British. These differences show up in the conversation between the two men and we get insight into what war, Nazism, and Communism feels like outside the classroom and in the personal lives of its victims and participants. The film won many awards including: Best Documentary, Newport International Film Festival; Best Documentary, Galway International Film Festiva; Special Jury Citation, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; and Audience Choice Award, Hamptons International Film Festival.