He was an acclaimed Hollywood producer, a Polish aristocrat, a lying scoundrel, a gay man married to an Italian countess and the director of The Dybbuk, one of the most important Jewish films ever made. Winner of Venice Film Festival's Best Documentary on Cinema, this spellbinding detective story searches the globe and film history with one question: who was Michal Waszynski, really? Born Moshe Waks, the son of a poor Jewish blacksmith in Ukraine, he died in Italy as a Polish prince with an oeuvre of more than 50 films, including hits with Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Orson Welles. Using their signature vibrant camerawork and artful narrative sense, acclaimed filmmakers Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski (The Domino Effect) reconstruct him as the modern-day Wandering Jew, a restless storyteller who, obsessed with the shtetls of his adapted masterpiece The Dybbuk, reinvents himself time and again, rejecting his true identity until he finally escapes it. Myrocia Watamaniuk
Co-presented with Toronto Jewish Film Festival.