9/10
Excellent movie about a young woman in a foreign land
3 October 2021
My Name Is Sara (2019) was directed by Steven Oritt. It stars Zuzanna Surowy as Sara. Sara is from Poland. Her family is destroyed by the German occupiers, but she manages to escape over the border into Ukraine.

Sara is able to convince the farmers that she's Christian. (It's not clear whether they believe her, or whether they just need another farmhand.)

This is more than just a survival movie. The farmers are not just a downtrodden mass of people under attack by the Germans and the partisans, both of whom want the food from their farm. Relationships are complex and every action is fraught with danger.

Zuzanna Surowy's performance is amazing. You really believe her as a brave young woman who promises her mother that she will survive the Holocaust. I was surprised to learn that Surowy wasn't a professional. She's a first-time actor who still manages to carry the film forward.

My Name is Sara has an appalling IMDb rating of 6.4. This is one of the films about which I write, "Did those people see the same movie that I saw?" I consider the film to be outstanding, and rated it 9.

We watched this movie virtually,, courtesy of the excellent Rochester Jewish Film Festival.
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