\n\tBy all rights Among Neighbors should have been a run-of-the-mill documentary event.<\/p>\n
\n\tYoav Potash\u2019s film \u2014\u00a0which explores a dark chapter of WWII \u2014\u00a0would normally be part of a reckoning that has been happening across Eastern Europe in recent years. The movie uses both animation and talking heads to examine the well-documented<\/a> murder of hundreds of liberated Jews by local Poles at the end of the Holocaust, focusing on a few particular stories.<\/p>\n \n\tBut Poland remains under the sway of the hard right Law and Justice\u00a0party and its allies. So when the broadcaster, TVP, aired the movie and made it available for streaming last month, it wasn\u2019t long before those politicians swung into action, with a high-ranking official in the office of president Karol Nawrocki saying that \u201ca television station that has \u2018Polish\u2019 in its name should not have it on its airwaves\u201d while others vowed to strip TVP of its license.<\/p>\n \n\tThe controversy highlights how even rigorous historical inquiry has become charged in a world of right-wing populism and also gives more than a few echoes of Donald Trump\u2019s pursuit of non-right-wing media in the name of patriotism back in the U.S. The Polish equivalent of the FCC has even joined the fight to go after the broadcaster.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd the incident underscores how, for all the supposed saturation of Holocaust stories, even historically necessary retellings from the period can now become disputed events.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s sadly predictable,\u201d Potash tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cMy film is falling into an ongoing campaign that the far right in Poland has launched over the last decade to whitewash aspects of World War II. Any account where Poles are depicted as anything other than victims or heroes is anathema, a third rail and they flip out.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhile Poland\u2019s government has for the past two years been center-left under prime minister and former European Council president Donald Tusk, the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party still has significant backing, winning more seats than any other in the 2023 parliamentary election; this summer the Law and Justice-blessed right-wing candidate and fierce Tusk antagonist Nawrocki also won the majority of the vote to become the country\u2019s president and second-most powerful politician after Tusk.<\/p>\n \n\tPotash spent years developing and shooting his movie, keying on the town of Gniewosz\u00f3w, and two survivors in particular who have an unlikely connection, Pelagia Radecka and Yaakov Goldstein, who are both seen on-screen in modern-day interviews with Potash. To put the viewer in the minds of the protagonists (and re-create scenes he didn\u2019t have footage for), the SF-based filmmaker employed a dreamlike animation technique that holds its own with the likes of modern documentary classics such as Waltz with Bashir.<\/p>\n \n\tThe movie garnered early grassroots love, including at a word-of-mouth screening hosted a year ago by Nancy Spielberg. It would go on to premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival several months later and got a theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles this fall with additional help from USC\u2019s Shoah Foundation as well as the Jewish Story Council; it has also qualified for the Oscars. The movie will roll out in various cities for International<\/a> Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.<\/p>\n \n\tIt was also received well in parts of the country in which it was set, with a strong screening at the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival last year and a later pickup by TVP.<\/p>\n \n\tYet Agnieszka Jedrzak, who serves as undersecretary to Nawrocki, posted on X after the premiere that the movie was \u201can anti-Polish historical manipulation,\u201d also offering the comment about a broadcaster with Polish in its name. Some 4,000 people have liked the post, which has been viewed more than 300,000 times.<\/p>\n \n\tMeanwhile, Poland\u2019s National Broadcasting Council, a group akin to the FCC, is launching an investigation with TVP\u2019s license on the line. The agency\u2019s chairwoman, Agnieszka Glapiak, a right-wing leader with strong ties to Law and Justice, has launched<\/a> an \u201cexplanatory proceeding\u201d involving the film and sent a letter to TVP asking it to provide materials defending the choice.<\/p>\n \n\tA TVP spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The broadcaster previously told the Polish site Wirtual Media that it would continue to air the film. The movie\u2019s goal \u201cis to familiarize viewers with the complexity of Polish-Jewish relations, the positive and heroic episodes along with the tragic ones,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n \n\tThe 73-year-old public entity is the largest and longest-running Polish broadcaster but came under wide criticism<\/a> during the run of Law and Justice, which had reshaped it, for becoming a far-right mouthpiece. It has been reshaped again in a more moderate direction under Tusk\u2019s government.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile some of the response in Poland has focused on and twisted minute details \u2014\u00a0J\u0119drzak, the right-wing president\u2019s deputy, also posted on X \u201cDoesn\u2019t the way the animation in the film depicts Poles during the occupation bother you? They have red, angry eyes, they denounce, eavesdrop, and track down Jews\u201d \u2014\u00a0Potash says he simply was trying to tell an up-close story of a complicated place.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cA dark side, that six months after the Holocaust so many Jews were murdered when they came home from the camps, is front and center because that\u2019s the story we were telling,\u201d says Potash, who previously directed the well-regarded criminal-justice doc Crime After Crime. \u201cWhat happened in our town was sadly not an isolated incident. But we\u2019re also careful not to paint all Poles with the same brush; it doesn\u2019t mean all Poles wanted Jews dead. There were heroes too. There were people sympathetic to Jews. And the film would not have been possible without the participation and cooperation of so many Polish people.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPoland in the modern age has been grappling with a rise in antisemitism, with Grzegorz Braun, a far-right member of parliament and notorious antisemite, giving a speech last month outside the gates of Auschwitz<\/a> saying that \u201cPoland is for Poles; other nations have their own countries, including the Jews\u201d and comparing Jews to Hannibal Lecter. He offered his comments on the anniversary of the day when 340 Jews were burned alive by their Polish neighbors in 1941 in an event known as the Jedwabne massacre. (Braun\u2019s remarks were condemned by more moderate politicians.) A report last month also reported a 67% increase in antisemitism<\/a> in Poland in 2024, while the country also has a law that imposes jail time for implicating Poland in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n \n\tTVP\u2019s willingness to stand up and keep the movie on the platform, Potash says, was a laudable act in the face of these winds.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPoland is a very divided society,\u201d he says. \u201cIt can seem hard to square until you look at the United States and how we divided we are about Trump and so many different policies, and then it becomes a little easier to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe filmmaker didn\u2019t specifically mention the administration\u2019s targeting of news outlets and late-night personalities and media companies\u2019 varying, often capitulative reactions to those efforts, but it was hard to miss the parallels. Reviewing the film, the independent San Francisco critic Dennis Harvey noted<\/a> that \u201cit\u2019s a strong piece with particular relevancy at a time when our own leaders appear very interested in burying any unflattering aspects of U.S. history.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhile grateful for the support of Jewish organizations, Potash also says he remains a little flummoxed by mainstream U.S. neglect of his film \u2014\u00a0 the major film festivals he said wouldn\u2019t take it, the NY Times and LA Times didn\u2019t review it and no streamer or distributor has yet bought it \u2014 despite the warm reception from those who have seen it and Potash\u2019s strong standing in the doc world. (THR\u2019s review of Crime After Crime called it<\/a> \u201ca powerful and emotional story of protracted injustice backgrounded by a potentially even more fascinating account of entrenched corruption in the Los Angeles D.A.\u2019s office.\u201d)<\/p>\n \n\t Among the reviews of his new film, however, there have been some puzzlers. While assessing the Holocaust picture, Film Threat, for instance, wrote that<\/a> \u201cIsrael as a state is not exactly regarded sympathetically, given the flattening of Gaza. Despite Potash\u2019s heartfelt accomplishments, now is simply not the time [to examine Jewish victims].\u201d<\/p>\n