“iMordecai” Oy Mordecai [MOVIE REVIEW]
Marvin Samel, director of “iMordecai,” wanted to honor his father with a personal family history. A cigar entrepreneur, Samel had been using his father as a punchline for years in the anecdotes he told during sales events he hosted. He realized he had a gold mine because his father’s stories were endless and when he sold his business, he went to work on his next project—Mordecai. Not hiding behind fictitious characters, Samel tells the story of his father, Mordecai Samel, mother Fela Samel, and himself. Set in Florida, Samel paints a picture of a family, while not exactly in crisis, floating in difficulty, conflict and denial. The creative use of animation tells the early story of Mordecai and his parents who were able to escape from Poland in 1939 as the Nazis invaded. They fled across the Soviet border while the rest of the extended family remained behind, eventually perishing in Treblinka. Life wasn’t easy for the Samels in Russia. Mordecai’s father was sent to a gulag and Mordecai spent his youth in a Siberian orphanage. Still, they survived and eventually immigrated to Israel. Cut to the present day and we meet an elderly Mordecai living in a retirement community making work…
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