Event

The Jewish Cardinal

Charlotte Jewish Film Festival film presented with Community Partner Mecklenburg Ministries.

Directed by Ilan Duran Cohen

The Jewish Cardinal is a historical drama that tells the amazing true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants to France, who maintained his cultural identity as a Jew even after converting to Catholicism at the age of 14, and later joining the priesthood.

Quickly rising within the ranks of the Church, Lustiger was appointed Archbishop of Paris by Pope Jean Paul II and found a new platform to celebrate his dual identity as a Catholic Jew, earning him both friends and enemies from each group. When Carmelite nuns settle down to build a convent within the walls of Auschwitz, Lustiger finds himself a mediator between the two communities - and may be forced at last to choose a side.

Drama/France/French with English subtitles/90 minutes/2012

Reviews:

"As Zweig and his subjects shuttle from the universal to the particular and back again, the movie's real subject isn't so much comedy but what it means to be Jewish. It's an impossible question to answer, of course. But it's also one well worth exploring, especially in a movie as funny and heartfelt as this one." - Toronto International Film Festival

"At its heart, The Jewish Cardinal is a film about separation, differences and reconciliation between two faiths that have grown further and further apart, but really come from the same seed." - Front Row Reviews

"Ilan Duran Cohen's The Jewish Cardinal is an intoxicating combination of ecclesiastical politics and very personal soul-searching, all bound into the indisputably real character of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the late Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris." - bestforfilm.com