Double Bafta-winner Stuart Urban (Our Friends in the North, An Ungentlemanly Act) finds a fascinating story in his own father's life. Garri Urban survived the Holocaust and Stalin's gulags, eventually making his way to the west in the last of a series of escapes.
Dir: Stuart Urban
Cinematography: Shay Peleg, Ben Nicolosi-Endo
DOUBLE Bafta-winner Stuart Urban (Our Friends in the North, An Ungentlemanly Act) finds a fascinating story in his own father's life. Garri Urban survived the Holocaust and Stalin's gulags, eventually making his way to the west in the last of a series of escapes.
After the Iron Curtain was swept back, Urban junior went east with his father to retrieve the latter's KGB file.
Using a mix of video diary and family cinefilm, this is largely the story of that quest and the astonishing details that emerged about Garri Urban's exploits.
More than this, it's the portrait of a sometimes infuriating but always noble man, and of a complex father-son relationship.
With so many strands to the story, Urban the film-maker doesn't always make it easy for the viewer to understand what happened and when, but his determination to get to the truth is infectious, and his love for a father he was never really to know burns clear.
An extraordinary and moving tale.
- Glasgow Film Theatre, May 26-27
