In Search of Happiness
Director Alexander Gutman
Countries
Duration 53 min
Synopsis
The central figure of the film In Search of Happiness is Boris Rak, the former chairman of the last Jewish collective farm. His parents, who arrived in Birobidzhan among the first Jewish settlers, exhanged a horse and cart for a tractor. The children and grandchildren of those who moved to the Soviet Far East in the 1920s, '30s and '40s to build the Jewish Autonomous Region have dispersed acress the whole world, leaving graves in the little Jewish cemeteries with red stars on their obelisks. This land was supposed to become a paradise for an enormous number of Jews. But the reality proved harsh. Their hopes were not destined to come true. Birobidzhan became for them the only and, alas, the last dream. Sometimes Boris Rak asks himself, "Who are we? What kind of a people are we? Why did we live as we did and why do we live this way now?"
The central figure of the film In Search of Happiness is Boris Rak, the former chairman of the last Jewish collective farm. His parents, who arrived in Birobidzhan among the first Jewish settlers, exhanged a horse and cart for a tractor. The children and grandchildren of those who moved to the Soviet Far East in the 1920s, '30s and '40s to build the Jewish Autonomous Region have dispersed acress the whole world, leaving graves in the little Jewish cemeteries with red stars on their obelisks. This land was supposed to become a paradise for an enormous number of Jews. But the reality proved harsh. Their hopes were not destined to come true. Birobidzhan became for them the only and, alas, the last dream. Sometimes Boris Rak asks himself, "Who are we? What kind of a people are we? Why did we live as we did and why do we live this way now?"