Alissa Simon Film Critic Sometimes films highlight little-known events in their country of origin that wind up catalyzing a re-evaluation of their nation’s history.
Finnish director Klaus Härö’s “Never Alone” is shaping up to be that sort of film. It follows the deportation from Finland of eight Austrian-Jewish refugees by the Gestapo during World War II and the work of Abraham Stiller, a pillar of the Helsinki Jewish community, who tried to stop it from happening.
Despite Finland’s uneasy alliance with Nazi Germany during the early years of the war, Jewish citizens of Finland had their government’s protection in spite of some Finnish officials who would have preferred to comply with the Gestapo’s requests to expel them all.
It’s the first cinematic treatment of this subject, which producer Ilkka Matila says was too painful a story for the Finnish state and the entire society to speak about publicly.
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