EVENT PREVIEW
The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is the largest film festival in Atlanta and the largest Jewish film festival in the country. More than 40,000 are expected to see the festival's 77 movies being screened around the city. It opens Jan. 26, with "Remember," at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre and continues through Feb. 17 at seven metro theaters, including SCADShow, Regal Cinemas Atlantic Station, Georgia Theatre Company Merchants Walk, Regal Avalon 12, Lefont Sandy Springs and United Artists Tara Cinema 4. General admission tickets are $13 (weekdays after 4 p.m. and all weekend shows); $11 for seniors (65 and older), students (with valid ID), and children 12 and under. Matinee screenings are $9 (Mondays-Fridays, start times until 4 p.m.). Special events are all $18: opening night (film only: "Remember," starring Christopher Plummer); closing night (film and post-screening food tasting for "In Search of Israeli Cuisine"); ACCESS Night (film and preshow party, aimed at young professionals); two screenings of "East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem," which include post-film performances by Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza.
Information about movie times and days at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival can be found at ajff.org.
Atom Egoyan loves watching movies in a crowd.
“You hear these very visceral reactions, and that’s such a thrill for filmmakers,” said the Canadian director. “And it’s getting rare. So much of film watching now is done privately online, and one of the huge pleasures of cinema is sharing these experiences communally.”
Though he won’t be here to see those reactions, Egoyan was delighted to learn that his thriller, “Remember,” will premiere in Atlanta at the 2,700-seat Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. It may be the biggest single audience the film has had.
But if Egoyan’s art house films like “Exotica” and “The Sweet Hereafter” aren’t known for drawing “Star Wars”-sized audiences, he’s been a hit with critics and at festivals. “Remember” had its world premiere last summer at the Venice Film Festival, where an audience of about 1,800 gave Egoyan a 10-minute standing ovation.
Now "Remember" is kicking off the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, showing Jan. 26 in a spacious setting, and some visceral reactions are expected.
It is a revenge story in which an aging Christopher Plummer goes on a cross-country trip seeking justice for the evils committed 70 years earlier at Auschwitz. His character, Zev, 90 and suffering from dementia, is an unfocused hit man who must read and reread his written instructions, which come in a letter from fellow nursing home patient Martin Landau.
Early in his quest, he writes a reminder to himself on his wrist in ballpoint pen: “Read the Letter.”
A killer with a shaky memory who inks reminders on his skin? The movie calls to mind the shifting sands of “Memento,” and Egoyan doesn’t mind the comparison.
“I love ‘Memento.’ It’s a brilliant movie,” he said. “But it’s a nonlinear movie, moving back and forth in time. What was very exciting about ‘Remember’ is that it’s linear. … There’s no flashbacks.”
Egoyan wanted to film the story in the simplest way possible. “It doesn’t look like my other films. All the focus should be on the characters.” Which is why Egoyan was happy to have Landau and Plummer on his team. “I knew I had brilliant actors to pull this off.”
Dread and uncertainty build throughout the film. The denouement brings a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan, and the less said about that the better.
Born in Egypt of Armenian parents, Egoyan ignored his heritage for many years, until he began looking into Armenian history while at college. Eventually he made “Ararat,” which concerns the 1915 genocide of the Armenian population in Turkey. Up to 1.5 million were killed.
Egoyan decided to return to the subject of historic atrocities when he read Benjamin August’s script for “Remember.” “It’s a completely original way of looking at the Holocaust and how it reverberates in our society today,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a precedent for (Plummer’s) character in any book I’ve read or any movie I’ve seen.”
While some elements of the film might seem far-fetched, the concept that Zev could travel cross-country, finding one former Nazi after another, was corroborated in the 2014 book “The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men.”
“These people he’s meeting, peppered across the U.S., are not fictional characters,” Egoyan said of Zev. “It speaks of a very real phenomenon.”
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