Underplayed Gems

Shttl (2022)

Shttl poster
Original title
שטטל
Directed by
Ady Walter
Genre
drama film
Country
Ukraine, France
Runtime
1h 54m
Rating
6.6 of 10 from 10 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like thisWatch the trailer

or watch the trailer on YouTube

How it feels

The film follows a single continuous shot through a Jewish shtetl in Ukraine in 1941. It shows the daily lives and interactions of the community just before the Nazi invasion.

one-shotday-in-the-lifequietforebodingintimatehistoricalsobercontemplativeelegiac

What happens

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. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.