It starts with a caterpillar. A simple gift from one child to another. It ends with a butterfly. And possibly a death.
Leslie Gottlieb, left, and Ben Shirinian are in pre-production for Josef and Aimée, a short film that follows two children’s relationship in the Holocaust.
This is how Leslie Gottlieb and Ben Shirinian plan to commemorate the Holocaust.
Gottlieb, a producer, and Shirinian, a director, are currently in pre-production for their short film, Josef and Aimée. The film, set in the south of France during the Holocaust, follows the relationship of two Jewish children taking refuge in an orphanage.
One child, Aimée, is adopted and has to leave Josef. Upon leaving, she gives him a caterpillar and makes him promise to never stop using his imagination. With the caterpillar in hand, Josef decides to leave the orphanage and find Aimée. At the end of his quest, he’s captured by Nazis and is taken away in a truck.
“I always wanted to tell a story and make it appeal to kids of any age,” Shirinian said. “Sometimes Holocaust stories can be hard to digest. The world we’ve tried to create is half reality and half a world in the child’s head.”
The short film, which has magical elements such as a talking caterpillar, will be shot entirely through a miniature set. The actors will be superimposed upon the set using a green screen. The film will also include animation and may end up having 3D elements.
“This type of visual execution is something children can engage in. It creates this magical world,” Gottlieb said.
The short film is the first in a four-step project. Josef and Aimée will eventually become a full-length feature film, which will enter pre-production late this year or early next year.
A storybook with photos from the set and a multimedia art exhibit using video and parts of the film set are part of the project. Gottlieb and Shirinian hope to take the exhibit to museums, schools and art shows.
For both Gottlieb and Shirinian, the film’s concept touches an emotional nerve. Gottlieb’s grandparents survived the Holocaust, while Shirinian’s grandparents were survivors of the Armenian genocide in 1915.
“The Holocaust has been so prevalent in my life,” Gottlieb said, adding that this affected the movie’s plot.
“We wanted to highlight that time period. We want to highlight that there were sacrifices, this was the type of experience that people had.”
One of the film’s main themes is innocence in the Holocaust, which is portrayed through Josef and Aimée’s friendship and Josef’s journey to find Aimée.
“We wanted to tell this story through the eyes of a child and to show innocence in the Shoah. Children, these things sort of happened to them [in the Holocaust],” he said.
“This film, at the forefront, is a love story between two children.”
The film also concentrates on personal growth, which is represented by the caterpillar that eventually becomes a butterfly.
Because the filmmakers wanted Josef and Aimée to be educational, they set the movie in the town of Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon, where non-Jews in the village provided shelter, education and forged identification documents for 3,000 to 5,000 Jewish children.
“We’re sensitive to that time period. We want to depict the orphanage as a place where Righteous Gentiles would house Jewish children,” Shirinian said.
Gottlieb agreed.
“Though our story is fiction, we drew on historical context. We want it to be an educational piece for children,” she said.
The original version of the film will be in French, with English subtitles, though it may be dubbed into different languages.
“We could have told it in English… we didn’t think it would do it justice,” Shirinian, who was born in Montreal and is bilingual, said. “[French] definitely adds a different vibe, a different tonality… I’ve always been drawn by French cinema.”
So far, Gottlieb and Shirinian have raised 70 per cent of the funds needed to finish their project. They’ve received a production grant from Bravo!FACT, which helps finance short films; a Toronto Arts Council media arts production grant and a National Film Board of Canada production grant.
For more information about the film, e-mail [email protected] or [email protected].
