Shttl
Shttl
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Shttl

Shttl (Yiddish: שטטל, Ukrainian: «Шттл») is a 2022 Ukrainian–French one-shot drama film written and directed by Ady Walter and starring Moshe Lobel and Saul Rubinek. The film depicts the lives of a Jewish shtetl on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. It was filmed in Ukraine six months before the 2022 Russian invasion.

Shttl premiered at the 2022 London Film Festival, and won the Audience Award one week later at the Rome Film Festival.

The missing 'e' in the title (normally spelled "shtetl") is a reference to Georges Perec's La disparition, a 1969 novel which doesn't contain the letter. The missing 'e', in French pronounced the same way as "eux" (they), represents, according to Walter, their absence, the void left behind in the Shoah; Perec's father died in the war, and his mother was killed in Auschwitz.

On September 8, 2023, it was announced that Shttl is on the shortlist to represent Ukraine for the 96th Academy Awards.

The film received two Golden Dzyga nominations by the Ukrainian Film Academy for its cinematography and production design.

Mendele, an aspiring filmmaker, has left his Hasidic community and joined the Red Army. On June 21, 1941, he returns to his shtetl in Western Ukraine, along with his Ukrainian best friend, Demyan. They plan to run away with the Rebbe's daughter, Yuna. However, she is already set to marry Folie, a zealous Hasid hoping to succeed the Rebbe as leader of the shtetl.

The Soviet Union has already been infiltrating the shtetl, indoctrinating the community with Soviet propaganda, and threatening the Jewish way of life. The conflict of contemporary ideologies is inflamed by Mendele's presence, as he speaks with old friends and intervenes in local matters.

Meanwhile, just across the border with Poland, Nazi Germany is preparing for their imminent invasion of the Soviet Union.

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