Maine Jewish Film Festival launches statewide showings of FOUR WINTERS in April to commemorate Yom HaShoah/ Day of Holocaust Remembrance

Portland, ME, March 21, 2023 — The Maine Jewish Film Festival (MJFF) is pleased to announce a robust schedule of filmscreenings statewide of the new documentary film FOUR WINTERS, written, produced and directed by Julia Mintz. Described as a "stunning, heartfelt narrative of heroism and resilience," this film tells the story of the 25,000 Jewish partisans who organized in the forests of Ukraine and Poland to resist and sabotage Nazis and their collaborators.

The partisan survivors, in their eighties when the film was made, look back with startling recall at their years of tragedy and uncertainty in interviews interwoven with movies and images of the time. Together, these survivors deliver an authentic and uplifting narrative that has until now occupied only the slimmes volume of knowledge about the Holocaust.

FOUR WINTERS will screen on Sunday, April 2, 2pm at Bates College (Lewiston); Saturday, April 15, 5:30pm at the Strand Theater (Rockland); Thursday, April 20, 6 pm at UMaine/Orono; Saturday, April 22, 2pm at the Maine Film Center (Waterville) Sunday, April 23, 3pm at the Portland Museum of Art; and Sunday, April 30, 6:30pm at Bowdoin College (Brunswick). Most of the screenings will be followed by an audience discussion with guest speakers.

Director Julia Mintz will join us fort he Portland Museum of Art screening. At Bates and Bowdoin, our guest will be Maine poet, daughter of partisans and Holocaust educator Anna Wrobel. At UMaine/Orono the screening will be followed by a conversation between Anne Knowles, Professor of History, and Derek Michaud, Lecturer of Philosophy, Coordinator of Religious and Judaic Studies.

Also, on Tuesday, April 18, 7pm, MJFF will present THE HOUSE ON WANNSEE STREET at the Jewish Community Alliance in Portland as part of its commemoration of Yom HaShoah. In this riveting documentary, Argentinian filmmaker Poli Martinez Kaplun searches for her Jewish family's roots in a century and a half of life in Berlin—in theprocess unraveling secrets and mysteries about the past. Funding to support this screening has been provided by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine through its Annual Campaign.

With the exception of the Strand Theatre in Rockland, all of these Yom HaShoah screenings are free of charge to the public. For more information, visit www.mjff.org