Screening of the documentary "A korabl plyvet" 5 October 2025

European premiere of the documentary "A korabl plyvet" (2025, 48 minutes, produced by Intercinema) .

Movie Description:

In May 1939, the liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg to Cuba. There were 907 Jewish passengers on board, many of whom had already passed through prisons and concentration camps.

But Cuba refused to let them in, the U.S. and Canada also turned their backs on them, and the ship was forced to turn back to Germany. At the last moment, Britain, France, Belgium and Holland reluctantly shared its desperate passengers. But very soon the last three countries were occupied by the Wehrmacht and the recent passengers of St. Louis found themselves in concentration camps.

This is where the first half of the movie ends. Its second half of the movie struck me as even more horrific - in it, the viewer is presented with our world today.

The memory of "St. Louis" is superimposed on October 7, 2023, when terror and barbarism again tried to declare themselves a struggle for a just cause. And we saw how all the ideals of our humanistic, civilized world suddenly turned into their opposite: victims turned overnight into the guilty, murderers into heroes and fighters for a just cause.

Don't hurry to argue, better come and see how two realities are connected in this movie: 1939 and 2023. That is why the movie is called "A korabl plyvet": the ship of anti-Semitism, indifference and cynicism sailed from 1939 to 2023 and now it has sailed to us.

The movie has not received a distribution license in Russia, festivals are shying away from it - too uncomfortable an angle, too direct a question: where is the boundary beyond which humanism passes before stupidity, ignorance and cynicism?

Fassbinder once called one of his best films "Fear Eats the Soul." The widespread refusal to show this movie is just such a case.

So come to the first screening of this film in Europe on October 5.

The screening will be followed by an online discussion with the film's authors.