Film Forum

“All I owned was a rifle, a leopard coat and my camera,” says Faye Schulman, whose clandestine photographs of Jewish partisans living in the forests of Eastern Europe documented their efforts to disrupt the Nazi killing machine by blowing up bridges, derailing trains, and smuggling Jews. The image of Schulman with an ammunition belt slung over her fashionable shoulder like a Mexican bandito is only one of many jaw-dropping moments in Julia Mintz’s riveting documentary. Some of the last surviving partisans tell stories of cold, hunger, and fear, but also of their capacity for courage, altruism, resourcefulness, and barbarism. Maybe you think you’ve heard it all before. You haven’t.

With support from the Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Film and the Richard Brick, Geri Ashur, and Sara Bershtel Fund for Social Justice Documentaries.

2022    96 MIN.    USA

Reviews

“A must-see Holocaust movie. (No, really) A documentary with suspense, humor, and zero sentimentality. It’s surprising, moving, horrifying…and sometimes shockingly funny.  The filmmaker weaves the speakers’ stories together in artful thematic montages. The narrators’ stories are frequently harrowing… but the tellers themselves are sometimes hilarious. These storytellers feel like indelible, individualized characters. FOUR WINTERS shows the challenges and the furious, vengeful, sickening thrill of violent resistance.
It also shows why it’s so difficult to stand up to tyranny.”
– Marjorie Ingall, Tablet Magazine