BOOK CLUB FILM EVENT
SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2026 • MIDTOWN CINEMA – buy tickets
                                           9:00 am – Pre-screening nosh 
                                          10:00 am – Film
                                          11:30 am – Discussion   

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2026 • 4:00 pm • MIDTOWN CINEMA – buy tickets

France, Belgium, 2024/Animated Drama, 81 minutes/French, Russian, German w/English subtitles/Directed by Michel Hazanavicius/Screenplay by Michel Hazanavicius and Jean-Claude Grumberg, based on the novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg 

Once upon a time, deep in a forest, there lived a poor woodcutter and his wife…  And so begins, the animated tale of a barren couple in a snow-blanketed rural village in WWII Poland, whose small, insular world is turned upside down when a baby girl is thrown from a passing train headed for the prison camp at Auschwitz.  Seeing the infant as a gift from God, the woman pledges to raise the child despite her husband’s initial resistance and the rising antisemitic fervor of the local villagers; that commitment soon unveils both the depths of human compassion and the harrowing cost of hatred. A visually stunning and deeply poignant cinematic gem based on “a story meant to be read in a single bated breath,” wrote Steven Kellman in Tablet.

Nominated:  Palme d’Or at the 2024, Cannes Film Festival; Nominated: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Animated Film, and Best Original Music, César Awards, France

The Most Precious of Cargoes has been generously sponsored by the Edward Finkelstein Jewish Film Festival Endowment

Please join us after 9:00 a.m. for bagels, coffee, and a screening of The Most Precious of Cargoes followed by a discussion of the film and the novel on which it is based with author and scholar Dr. Yelena (Helen) P. Khanzhina.  Professor Khanzhina earned her Ph.D. in World Literature from the University of St. Petersburg (Russia).  She immigrated to the United States in the 1990s, where for many years she continued to teach literature and writing at the university level.  For the last 14 years Helen has facilitated the Book Club Film discussion, in the process making it one of the most eagerly anticipated events of each Film Festival season.