Runtime: 1 hr 57 mins
Synopsis: Refusenik chronicles the thirty-year international movement to free Soviet Jews. Told through the eyes of activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain (including interviews with Natan Sharansky and L.A. Country Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky) - many of whom survived punishment in Soviet... [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
There are fascinating archival clips that show rare glimpses of early years of struggle behind the Iron Curtain, while the story eventually moves through such momentous footage as the Helsinki Accords and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The result is a documentary that plays like a fat, satisfying work of nonfiction literature -- the final word because it seems to contain every word.
Packed with an extraordinary amount of archival material, the film offers a fascinating, if occasionally dense look at a grass-roots movement that became the world's chance to retroactively fight Hitler's Holocaust.
Top Critic
[Director] Bialis chronicles all this with perhaps too much thoroughness. But, given the nature of the subject, you get the sense that she doesn't want to leave out any voice, no matter if they add little in the way of new information.
[An] absorbing portrait of the refusenik movement of the 1960s and ’70s.
Refusenik's opening on Israel's 60th birthday could not have been more timely.
Refusenik falls short as entertainment because of the plodding, overly studious approach of the director, Laura Bialis.
Top Critic
Refusenik does not so much capture the moment as it does educate, however, with material so compelling and inspiring, a thorough education serves.
Using title cards, interviews, and endless archival footage, Bialis is able to tie a very specific history to the course of 20th century upheaval.
Refusenik is a little dry in its presentation, relying on a conventional mix of talking heads and stock footage. But Bialis has good footage to work with, including some film shot by the BBC in Moscow using equipment smuggled in by tourists.
Visually and intellectually brisk, the movie is as lively as its subjects’ gumption is humbling.
One can only hope that future films about today's most pressing humanitarian crises have such unambiguously happy endings.
The story of the nearly thirty years of courage in the face of repression in the Soviet Union. This is polished and evocative filmmaking.
We've been hearing a lot this year about human-rights abuses and the potential impact of organized protests and diplomacy on uncooperative countries. Rarely is the subject addressed as effectively as it is in Laura Bialis' absorbing new documentary.
[Director] Bialis may have been too diligent in tracking down sources.
What is revealing here is the heretofore unseen civil-rights movement, small but dedicated, that began in the 1960s behind the Iron Curtain.
A heartwarming doc about the decades-long struggle to free Jews from Soviet oppression.
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