The Sound Man
Wednesday, May 13 | 7:00 p.m. | Berney Theatre | Asper Jewish Community Campus
Feature | Belgium | 2025 | Director: Frank Van Passel | Dutch with English subtitles | 110 minutes
The Sound Man is a very unique film set just before the Nazis invade Belgium. While the story is fictional, it is based on historical truths and is inspired by real people and events in Belgium. The film is written and directed by Belgium’s filmmaker Frank Van Passel, and the film invites audiences not simply to watch but to listen.
In this compelling narrative, a young man named Berre begins work at a radio station in 1940. He is unusual in that he experience the world primarily through hearing rather than speech, or through visuals. Berre often closes his eyes so that he can experience the world only though sound. The film which showcases technical brilliance is also a deeply human story. It explores themes of isolation, intimacy, and the ways people communicate beyond words. Berre meets Elsa, a beautiful Jewish refugee living in Brussels without papers who sings for radio and the two, who are on the same frequency, fall in love.
Van Passel has said he wrote this film since his research showed that there were 10,000-15,000 refugees in Belgium that disappeared on the eve of the Second World War, who he believes almost forgotten.
At one level, the film’s emphasis on the auditory world shows how sound can affect our emotions. On another level, Van Passel’s moving film shows that even in the very darkest of moments, love, beauty, and tenderness are enduring. Old matte-painting techniques and stylized interiors reflect the Berre’s inner world. There are few exterior shots in the film which serves to emphasize a sense of intimacy and isolation.
In an interview with Rough Draft , Van Passel said regarding the film’s focus on sound, “As a fetus, you start hearing, but you don’t see yet. It’s one of the first senses that is really part of a fetus, part of a human being. And in cinema and in moving making, we did turn it around – there were the moving images first.”
He added that the film is “ a very sensitive story, because it’s connected with refugees who came to Belgium looking for shelter and for help … Because it’s about mostly Jewish people, there’s a huge connection with antisemitism. Although, I do realize that, at that moment through the Belgian government, antisemitism was not their main thing. It was distrusting refugees. They did not trust refugees, because they were coming into Belgium with some ideas that might not be the ideas of the Belgium political middle class at that moment.”
With this film, Van Passel hopes audiences will listening more closely to the world around them.
Lucky Star (La Bonne Etoile)Friday, May 8 | 5:30 p.m. | Berney Theatre | Asper Jewish Community Campus
Comedy-Drama | France | 2025 | Director: Pascal Elbé | French with English Subtitles | 91 minutes | 18A
Film Trailer | Tickets
This is a 2025 film by a French Jewish actor, director and screenwriter Pascal Elbé who was born to a family of middle class Jewish immigrants from Algeria, who was raised in Strasbourg and at 18 moved to Paris to study The drama is set in film In 1940 in Nazi occupied France where everyone is trying to get by. Jean Chevalin , who is a former soldier and deserter finds himself in dire poverty with his wife and son. The antisemitic Chevalin devises an absurd and reckless plan to pretend to be Jewish because he is under the illusions that Jews will land on top with much wealth at the end of the war,. He convinces his wife to pretend to be Jewish in order to enable them to get help from smugglers to the free zone, They get new forged identity papers Changing his name to Jacob Chevalinovitch and his saying he is a dentist.. His wife says to the man doing the forgery that her husband decided to say he is a dentist since he knows how to lie through his teeth.
Chevalin’s deception will mean he and his family have to face unexpected situations., and they are in for far more than they bargained for, including his having to join the resistance and blowing up a Nazi armament factory. The film has some dark satire, although I really did not really find it to be a comedy, but more a drama. Becoming Jewish does lead him to have some soul searching about his pre-conceived notions of Jews .as the journey unfolds his prejudice cracks and there is a gradual awakening he has about solidarity and human dignity. He meets up with a Jewish shop owner played by Pascal Elbe, with the last name Goldstein, who is looking for his young son Solomon who was arrested, and the two men become friends.
Given the escalating climate of antisemitism in today’s France, i have wondered how this film was received by the French public who viewed it.
