FIGHTER

Fighter tells the story of two elderly Czech Jewish emigres, Jan Wiener and Arnost Lustig. Both men left Czechoslovakia following the 1968 Soviet repression of the Prague Spring for America, where they met and became friends. The film follows the pair as they retrace the war-time escape route from Prague taken by Wiener, who fled the German occupation to join the Czech forces in Britain where, after many incredible experiences, including a spell in an Italian prison, he flew bombers for the Royal Air Force, helping to liberate his homeland from the Nazis. Lustig's war was different. He and his family were sent to concentration camps, where many died. Wiener's family also suffered: his father and German stepmother committed suicide in Yugoslavia on the day of the Nazi invasion, and his natural mother was murdered in the Theriesenstadt concentration camp. Bar-Lev's original idea to shoot a straightforward documentary following the feisty Weiner's path from Prague got diverted by the increasingly dramatic tension between the two old friends, who manage to agree on virtually nothing about their experiences.