My Name Is Sara

This was a wonderful film. Had I known when watching it that it was a true story I would have been even more immersed. The Nazis and the persecution of the Jews takes a back seat to what is really a movie about people living in the country in that region during the war and the interactions between the lead character Sara and the other two main characters. The acting is completely believable. There is nothing contrived. Nothing felt like padding. So glad that movies like this are being made. A true education about human beings.

The film portrays the survival story of young Sara, portrayed with subtle intensity by Zuzanna Surowy. Amongst the horrors of the Nazi occupation, and the ferocious Jews persecution in the Ukraine the protagonist manages to escape pretending to be a gentile. The peasant she shelters with are not good or altruistic, they are just downtrodden people, fiercely attached to their land and traditions. While the cinematography and the direction is passable but not memorable and the story line somehow mundane, probably the better aspect of the production reside in the depiction of the local peasant society, of their perennial straggle against whatever power exploit them and their self-reliance. People that cannot afford to be generous or open-minded. There are only few acts of genuine altruism and many more of the opposite but the unsentimental and non-judgmental approach to the storytelling is refreshing, leaving the viewer to make up its mind on the grey morality of the real world.

It's 1942 eastern Poland. Jewish fugitive Sara Guralnick (Zuzanna Surowy) is on the run with her older brother. She leaves him behind and takes on the identity of her longtime Christian friend. She becomes the nanny to Ukrainian couple, Nadya and Pavlo. It's a struggle to maintain her secret as she navigates the dangerous world.

It's a harrowing true story. The actors are great. It's danger for Sara at every turn. The movie paints a compelling complicated picture of that world. The complicated personal relationships are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a reality to the story that doesn't feel constructed.

My Name Is Sara (2019) was directed by Steven Oritt. It stars Zuzanna Surowy as Sara. Sara is from Poland. Her family is destroyed by the German occupiers, but she manages to escape over the border into Ukraine.

Sara is able to convince the farmers that she's Christian. (It's not clear whether they believe her, or whether they just need another farmhand.)

This is more than just a survival movie. The farmers are not just a downtrodden mass of people under attack by the Germans and the partisans, both of whom want the food from their farm. Relationships are complex and every action is fraught with danger.

Zuzanna Surowy's performance is amazing. You really believe her as a brave young woman who promises her mother that she will survive the Holocaust. I was surprised to learn that Surowy wasn't a professional. She's a first-time actor who still manages to carry the film forward.

My Name is Sara has an appalling IMDb rating of 6.4. This is one of the films about which I write, "Did those people see the same movie that I saw?" I consider the film to be outstanding, and rated it 9.

We watched this movie virtually,, courtesy of the excellent Rochester Jewish Film Festival.

Outstanding sweep of the complexities of surviving in wartime. The fact that it is a true story adds needed perspective to how vulnerable everyone is when mad men reign. Particularly touching as we consider the current Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I recommend this to everyone!