Look into My Eyes, HRW Film Festival Review
Look Into My Eyes
A Film by Naftaly Gliksberg
2008, 80 minutes.
Click here for screening times.
To deny something is to admit to its existence; at least that’s what the word has come to mean in the media. When an official ‘denies’ the allegations, the cards are already stacked against her; far better to ‘vehemently disagree’ than to ‘deny’. For if she has denied the allegations then we all know (us, the listeners) that she probably damn well did it. Denial implies that we are ignoring a truth beneath, and we use the word all the time. It is a loaded term.
Naftaly Gliksberg’s film Look into My Eyes shows us how much anti-Semitism is denied today. And that, seething beneath this denial, the truth is more terrifying and insidious than we may have imagined.
Gliksberg, a former Rabbi from Israel, travels through Europe and the U.S. to speak with people about anti-Semitism. But he doesn’t want to find it. There is an optimism and kindness in his demeanor that suggests he would rather not discover anti-Semitism at all. Sadly, he not only identifies it, but unearths prejudice against Jews in everyone from altar boys to comedians.
