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Film screening You Only Die Twice

#ErasmusDays
Academy
Studio Building
Lehárgasse 8
1060 Vienna
2. floor, Multi-Purpose Space

A film screening in the presence of the director Yair Lev: You Only Die Twice, ISR/A/D 2018, 91 min. D&D Productions. NGF - Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion GmbH in the frame of #ErasmusDays.

A Jewish detective story in the Alps revolving around the former President of the Jewish Community in Tyrol, Ernst Beschinsky. A man with this name dies twice – once in 1969, in Israel, and a second time in 1987, in Innsbruck. This goes unnoticed, at first. In 2010, when a relative in London leaves a house as an inheritance, the question arises in Israel and Innsbruck: Who was Ernst Beschinsky really?

The grandson of the “real” Beschinsky, the Israeli documentary filmmaker Yair Lev, starts on his way to find out who had stolen his grandfather’s identity. He sets out with producer and cameraman David Deri, conducting completely open-ended research, first in Vienna and Innsbruck. Here, he meets relatives from the “other side”, and a thrilling plot starts to unravel in which prominent Tyrolean Nazi families play as big a role as their unexpected support in the rescue of the Innsbruck President Beschinsky through the Nazi era. For a long time, the local Jewish Community fears a scandal. But then, letters emerge in Germany and the U.S. which eventually tell the strong love story between Ernst and Ilse, outshining minor and major misleading by the authorities in Vienna, Prague, Zurich, Zagreb, and Tel Aviv. Eighty years after the end of the war, the generation of grandsons of the two Beschinskys arrives at a mutual, conciliatory way of looking at the events.

A true story, told by numerous forged documents and many authentic reports: https://www.geyrhalterfilm.com/en/you_only_die_twice

Awards

  • Best Research Award: Forum of Documentary Filmmakers - Israel 2019
  • Audience Choice Award: Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, Ohio - USA 2019
  • Best Feature Documentary Award: NIFF Noida International Film Festival -  India 2019
  • Audience Award for Best Documentary Film: São Paulo Film Festival (Jewish Film Festival) - Brazil 2019
  • Best Research Award: Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival - Israel 2018
  • Audience Award: Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival - Israel 2018
  • Best Research Award: Israeli Documentary Film Awards 2018
  • Nominee: Best Documentary Film: Ophir Award 2018 (Israel Film Academy)

Yair Lev was born in 1959 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a director and writer, known for You Only Die Twice (2018), Hanadon: Uri Avneri (2002), and The Longings of Maya Gordon (2017). He is a Professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts, and in the renowned Sam Spiegel Filmschool.