Misha and the Wolves

It's an amazing story with its own unexpected turns. One has his/her own way of looking at Misha and her story. The detective work of Belgian Evelyne Haendel, a Holocaust survivor herself, is remarkable. She was really persistent. In the end, Deborah Dwork's words ring true. Misha's story affects the story of all other Holocaust survivors.

The artist's sketches to aid in storytelling are noteworthy.

Misha and the Wolves takes a while to get going, a long while. And toward the middle, it really bogs down. But the last 20-30 minutes are a decent payoff.

If this documentary were edited better, and if we lost the 20-30 minutes of people staring at the camera and making faces, it would have been so much better.

This could have been a stellar 40-50 minute piece. Instead, it felt very stretched out and felt time-wastingly slow.

I had to stop halfway through and check in with the friend who recommended it to me. He told me the twist at the end was worth it, and it was.

I still recommend watching it, but I'd recommend multitasking for the first 50-60 minutes.

This documentary was like a film within a film, that did not seem like a documentary, but more of a mystery thriller TV episode. It was paced well and the presentation was very well done and, it kept you well entertained. I had guessed within the first 5 minutes or less - as I am sure the many who have seen it did also - that the heroine of the story was...I won't say more so as not to give the story away if you have not yet viewed this superb bio film. I was not however expecting her to have such a complexed personality disorder. I initially had just thought she was a despicable fraud.

Of the 135 documentary films I have so far watched this year, this is definitely in my top 10!

The film documents the story of Misha and the people it impacted. The documentary then pulls away the layers of truth and deception and reveals the shocking motives Misha may have had for telling her tale.

I'm left with perhaps more sympathy for Misha than the filmmakers. Her childhood taught her social cruelty, that people could label you and punish you based on a narrative. Why then, would she feel any guilt over controlling her own narrative and benefitting from it? The cruelty that she endured as a war orphan did not teach her empathy; she learned that people would only sympathize with her if the narrative was right. A Holocaust survivor calls Misha "villain and victim;" the film, perhaps, fails to mention the real wolves of the story: the Belgians who judged an orphan by events out of her control and taught her to lie to avoid public humiliation.

I won't give anything away but this was something else.

If Netflix went for quality like this instead of quantity and streaming any cruddy documentary out there they've the gold standard of streaming.

This was a heck of a story.