Finding Your Roots to Write Your Story

History-obsessed Randy Schoenberg (memorably portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in Woman in Gold) brings his reluctant teenage son Joey along for the journey of a lifetime, through Europe and the centuries, to reclaim 500 years of their family story. Along the way, they encounter kings, mystics, and a false messiah — as well as numerous ordinary and extraordinary people who witnessed Europe's tumultuous past. And the relationship between father and son is forever changed. Randy is renowned for recovering Nazi-looted art, but his greatest achievement might just be reuniting the fractured and scattered shards of his own family.

The beauty of making documentaries is the various stages of discovery, from the research phase, and interviews to even being on location. There's potential all around you as a documentarian, but the key is choosing what will nourish your story to the best of your ability, with the tools you have at your disposal. 

What makes this film remarkable and stand out from other historical documentaries is the visual language and narrative structure created by director and co-writer Matthew Mishory and his creative team behind the scenes. 

I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Matthew Mishory, as well as documentary subjects Randol "Randy" Schoenberg and Joey Schoenberg. We cover everything from embarking on this documentary journey, self-discovery, creating a tonal aesthetic language with camera movement and sound design, and the importance of family history. 

The following interviews have been edited for content and clarity.

Interview with Director and Co-Writer Matthew Mishory

Sadie Dean: How did you initially get involved with this project? Did you know Randy beforehand?

Matthew Mishory: Randy and I sort of knew each other, just because we had both in our own ways had been kind of bouncing around in the fine arts classical music world. I've done a couple of films on classical music subjects in Europe, one of them in fact, about a composer pianist, who is a friend of Randy's grandfather, Arnold Schoenberg, and Randy had seen that movie. We were sort of formally introduced on the film I made just before this one, about six months before, I did a film called Who Are the Marcuses? and Randy came in sort of at the last minute to be interviewed for that movie, because we needed somebody who could speak to the sort of very specific Austria German Jewish experience in America in particular, because this film was about a couple who were Holocaust escapees and had lived in New York and then in San Diego, and then unbeknownst to absolutely anybody had amassed a $500 million fortune, which they never told anybody about and then duly left all of it to charity in hopes of solving the world's water and climate crisis. And so, we needed someone to speak to the very specific German Austria Jewish ethos and how somebody could amass that money and not bother to show it off at all in their lifetime. 

And so, as sort of an expert on that immigrant community, Randy came in and spoke about it and in the course of our interview, he was, as people often do on film sets, sitting around and waiting [laughs] for the lighting, and he mentioned to my producer, Brad [Schlei], that he was about to embark on a trip to look for this long last headstone, and that his cousin, Serena [Nono], a painter, in Venice had commented, that would be an interesting film.

And we got to talking and the more we got to talking, the more I was convinced that it would be a very interesting film. So that was sort of the germ of the idea. And we started having some conversations about what that trip would be like and what might be sort of discovered along the way. And then we scheduled a scout and Randy and I went and scouted the locations and he introduced me to the various sort of colorful, strange, and interesting people with whom he embarks on these journeys of family discovery. And once I met them, I was very sure that there would be a great documentary in this material. Brad likes to refer to those characters as sort of the Wes Anderson quotients of the movie where we sort of take you to Old World haberdasheries and dusty archives and libraries and cemeteries and people in corduroy jackets with shoulder pads who rub chalk on gravestones and make the inscription bits here, that kind of thing.

Sadie: In terms of the film's structure, after having done the location scout, did you develop an outline? And for documentary storytelling purposes, were you just letting it be its own living and breathing thing so that you could explore that through the writing portion of it with Rob Levin?

Matthew: Yes. And thank you for mentioning Rob. Of course, the journey couldn't have happened the way it did without him. I write my documentaries. And I think that, if filmmakers, or least makers of interesting documentary films are honest, they would say the same. I scouted the movie with Randy and had a sense of where the journey might take him and met his family and met his friends and had a sense of the characters we could fill a film with. And then Rob and I sat down and wrote what we wanted the film to be, and then there's an extra step, of course, with documentaries, which is you shoot the film, and the film you shoot becomes even better and more interesting - I mean, if you do it right - better and more interesting and deeper and stranger and weirder and more surprising, than the sort of baseline film you've written and hope to achieve. And I think that's what happened.

Sadie: What I found so interesting with this, too, is that there isn't necessarily a central conflict. Other than will they find this headstone? One moment that I found so interesting, and it was a minor bump to this journey, not getting admittance into the Jewish cemetery in Vienna. When moments like that happens, what are you guys thinking in the moment in terms of story, being prepared to be in this location, gearing up to get all this great footage, how do you pivot from there?

Matthew: Yeah, so I have to admit that this was a moment of sort of deep personal frustration, not only for Randy, but for me, because I had been inside the cemetery a few months earlier. I knew it was there. I knew what was inside and we really wanted Randy to go in there. And to sort of reveal to the audience, the camera, what he had found. And for reasons completely beyond our control, and entirely unexpectedly as portrayed in the film, I mean, that's an actual embarrassing moment in the film that is not created in any way, we were shut out. And so, it was very frustrating for me, for Randy, and you feel his genuine frustration in the movie. 

But again, this is the advantage of a collaboration with a writer who was also with me on set, Rob, who as we were very frustrated and seemingly not about to get let in, Rob turned to me and said, ‘Well, this is an interesting scene. Let's see where it goes.’ And we did. One of the great things about filming Randy as a character is that there's no distance between his honest reaction to his circumstances and his film persona, there is no persona - Randy is Randy. So, he reacted as Randy would react and he's very honest in that scene, and I think, from the kind of previous screenings we've had so far, audiences really respond to that moment.

Sadie: It says so much about his character too in how he treats that moment. And he's still very kind and humble about all of it and finds a way to push forward.

Matthew: That's right. Yeah, I wanted to just push back in the tiniest, gentlest way to the suggestion that there isn't a central conflict in the film, because I actually think while the sort of search for the gravestone is certainly the setup, I feel that if there's a conflict and there is actually, it's a subtle thing, but I think it's the ways in which Randy's relationship with his son, change and grow and deepen throughout the film. And specifically, how the next generation and this is, of course, a very big part of Jewish life, but I think also a universal thing, the sort of intergenerational transmission of knowledge and particularly cultural knowledge and heritage, how that takes place. Because Joey's character, and again, this is just very genuine, he was an 18-year-old kid who found himself in the movie, not an actor, the way in which he's sort of opened up bit by bit throughout the film to the idea of becoming a part of something that of a legacy that his father has had been building for him. I find that to be the most moving central thread of the film.

Sadie: Yeah, I totally agree. I love seeing his transformation from being kind of aloof to becoming an active participant.

Matthew: Thank you. I'm so glad that that stood out in some way, because I think that Randy's passion and inevitable march towards discovery is not a surprise. He's pretty much the person we think he is at the beginning. But I think within Joey, there's an interesting and substantial shift, and then within the dynamic between the two of them, there's I think it's very recognizable to a universal audience sort of dynamic between father and son where they both kind of make space for each other. And I find that very, very gratifying. I think those kinds of stories always work in movies and that was Rob's intuition that the father-son element would find a way to kind of take over the story. And in the end, he was right. It did.

Sadie: This movie has a very specific aesthetic tone. What was the creative collaboration like with your cinematographer?

Matthew: For me, there's no distinction between documentary and narrative filmmaking. They're both about creating memorable and unforgettable images. Visual storytelling is visual storytelling. And I kind of approach documentary and narrative the same way in that regard. The difference, of course, is that you have to make more space for lack of a better word reality to sort of seep in, or to put it another way, you have to sort of make more space for improvisation in the process. So, I knew from the beginning that I wanted this to be a film of scenes and a journey as opposed to an interview-based movie, and I was sort of a little tired of interview-based documentary at that moment. [laughs] And I wanted to do something that was more expansive and narrative-based and a visual experience designed to be seen in a movie theater on a big screen. And that sort of governed the conversation from the very beginning.

And I was really fortunate to have a wonderful collaboration with a great Polish cinematographer, Maciej Twardowski. And when we first started talking about the movie, we always, I think, knew that a lot of this film was going to be shot on a Steadicam. It's something that really sets this so apart from so many documentaries is that our Steadicam operator Filip [Rybar], who was part of our wonderful Czech crew, was with us every day and basically accompanied us on this journey through Europe. And a moving kind of roving floating camera was always, we thought, going to be the way to open up the visual and to make space for our characters who were not actors, but real people to experience things.

But I wanted to do the same thing also with textures and materials. And so, there's quite a lot of film shot in this movie, especially 16-millimeter Ektachrome. And at one point, we were buying all the remaining cans of Ektachrome that we could find in Europe to make sure we had enough, so that when we arrived in Venice, and moving through the canals of Venice that we didn't run out of film, so there's a lot of textures.

And I think that the people of Randy's grand narrative of 500 years, they're not alive anymore. Fioretta's headstone is there, but she's not, but the places are. And I've always had that sense, I've done I've done a lot of films in Europe now, and I always have this feeling that maybe you get a little bit in New York, but you certainly really don't get in California, which is the feeling of being in a place that's very old and haunted and defined by its history. And one has that feeling in Europe. Europe isn't really making a lot of new history, just now. Although sometimes it is, but and certainly Randy is, but it is defined by the centuries. And the places that remain, sort of temples or palaces to that history. And so, I wanted to make the capturing of those places a really big priority in the film.

And I think if nothing else, if you go along with us for this journey, even if say the specifics of European history of the last three or 400 years are not your entry point to the story, well, maybe spending a few hours in some of the most beautiful and moving places on earth, that can be your entry point. I saw that as also potentially being a doorway story for a certain percentage of the audience.

Sadie: And those drone shots are so profound too.

Matthew: Yeah, thank you for that. The drone is really sort of a Steadicam in the sky. So, it was all kind of the same concept, I think, which was, when people hear a film about history and history books and archives and libraries, they think static, they think of Ken Burns maybe, and I wanted to make precisely the opposite kind of movie. And so, when I think of history, and particularly the history that Randy is telling, I think of a dynamic rather than a static story. One that's constantly changing and evolving and revealing new layers and elements.

It was important to me that the camera be moving as much as possible throughout the film, and there's very, very few locked-down shots taken on tripods where the cameras not moving or at least breathing in some sort of way. And it was also important to me that in terms of pacing, that the film will move as well. Even though there's actually quite a lot of scenes in the film, because it's like an eight-week trip that we've captured, I feel that even at a sort of two-hour running time, the film really moved - it's always on the move and we're constantly moving between locations and places and there's never, I think a feeling of stasis.

Sadie: In terms of the sound design and the choice of music and where it’s placed in the film, can you share what those creative decisions were like?

Matthew: Sound has always been very, very important to me. The great sound recordist who also composed the original score is a collaborator, Ohad Stemati, who I brought from Israel to record sound and he was often sort of spotted on set disappearing back into cemeteries with recording equipment, and I have some great set stills of Ohad standing with his recording equipment recording graves, which provide a lot of the sort of subtle dialogue throughout the film. So, all of the sounds of the cemeteries which I thought were really important settings for the movie, but also really beautiful, we're in fact recorded, those are not library sounds. We recorded every one of those cemeteries and had to mix those sounds in along with our mixing here in Los Angeles, and they created those kinds of soundscapes.

And music was always going to be exceptionally important in a film about the Schoenberg family. And Arnold Schoenberg's music appears at pivotal moments throughout the film sometimes announced and sometimes unannounced in subtle ways. And I wanted to surround it with a really kind of ambitious mix of other cues of original music. The film has an enormous soundtrack of dozens of cues throughout the movie. We worked with a really great music supervisor, Chadwick Brown, here in LA to find a lot of that and I've always been kind of drawn to the sort of kind of shoegaze movements of the '80s and early '90s, musically, it's good moody music for traveling throughout a kind of haunted European landscape. And so, this was a great movie to kind of bring a lot of those sounds into the film.

Sadie: What do you hope audiences take away from watching this film?

Matthew: I hope that thematically…besides the film being an experience, and I think that some should be experiential, above all, they should be about kind of textures and moments and feelings and visuals, and I hope we've achieved that. I think that thematically I would love an audience to walk away with a sense of history as an always evolving and unfolding and also intimately revealing process. And, specifically, I think, in this movie, I hope we convey, the idea that history is not just the story of great men, or great women and their accomplishments and achievements…but also very small moments experienced by very small and seemingly insignificant people whose stories are worth preserving and reveal something about the arc of human history. And I think our film does a really good job of bringing back to life people whose lives and experiences would have essentially been lost to the ash heap of history if it were not for Randy’s persistent efforts to dig them up.

Interview with E. Randol "Randy" Schonberg and Joey Schoenberg

Sadie Dean: Was there ever any hesitancy for you in embarking on this journey and making this documentary?

E. Randol “Randy” Schoenberg: It's a big undertaking, and I had been, or at least tangentially involved with Woman in Gold. So, I sort of knew a little bit about how complicated filmmaking is. I was on set for, I guess, a day, or two…and said, 'Never again,' [laughs] because they'd asked me to be an extra…it was in July, it’s super hot at 7:30 am and then they didn't actually film the scene until 5 pm. “I'm never going to do that again.” And here I am seven years later doing it again.

This time, I thought I would have a little bit more fun and a little bit more control. Although, I wasn't really, at all, and there were times when there are long delays…there was some frustration occasionally, but really, it went very smoothly. And I was very happy with the whole experience. So, I was hesitant, I think because of the enormous time and commitment.

But in terms of telling the story, it's something that I've been interested in since I was a little kid, and the idea that anybody else in the world would find it interesting [laughs] it was a hook for me once they at least pretended to be interested in it - I was completely sold and had to go along. I've been to genealogy conferences, and there's nothing that bores people more than talking about your genealogy, right? Like even at a genealogy conference, no one wants to hear about other people's genealogy. So the way Matthew thought that he could make that interesting to other people by weaving together the story, not just me and Joey, but also the story of the people that we meet who helped us along the way on this sort of treasure hunt, and using them and our relationship with them to tell the story of this history, this community history basically of Jews in Europe through 500 years, I thought that was very intriguing to me and nice that I could be sort of the vehicle for that larger story.

Sadie: There was certainly an advantage for Matthew and his team - usually in a documentary like this, it would be so research-heavy, but you were their research guy!

Randy: [laughs] There were times when they're like, ‘We're going to have to look that up,’ I'm like, ‘No, you don't have to look anything up. Just ask me and I will be able to find it and answer the question for you.’

Sadie: How much were you able to guide just that process of that journey and storytelling, by knowing what you’re looking for, whom you’re speaking with, and how that would be a great storytelling piece for the film?

Randy: Yeah, that's a great question. The way we did it, the way we prepared, and I guess this is Script Magazine, so you're interested in the nuts and bolts of how we did it - two things; one is that Matthew and I took a scouting trip…and it was still the pandemic, I guess, we're forgetting now, but have you been to Venice and the St. Mark's Square?

Sadie: Yeah.

Randy: It's always packed with people. And imagine going there and having zero people, and it was just - the pigeons are still there, obviously [laughs] - but all the cafes are closed, the whole thing is boarded up and closed, and you're walking through this ghost town in Venice. It's unbelievable. So we were traipsing through all these locations. And that was a real test, right? Because it was just me and Matthew, and it was two weeks together. And I had met him a few times…and then the idea that we were going to spend two weeks together, just the two of us going around, that was a real test of whether we would get along and whether we could do this. And we did. We didn't fight.

So, there was that aspect of the scouting, which went extremely well, I think better than it would ever go on any other movie. [laughs] Because we really were just completely in sync. And then also I put together a blog…ultimately, where for each character, each genealogical step, I collected all the evidence and wrote whatever we knew about that person, so all the different story elements that we could use. And then also, I found paintings of Jews around that time to share with Serena so she could use that as sort of a model for what the person might have been wearing and what style for Nick and her to do her paintings. And so that blog was sort of my contribution to the narrative.

And then I also at one point wrote out, sort of the story of how we came to do it and why it was important to me. And then Matthew and Rob Levine also who worked on the script for it used that as a model. And then of course, it all changed when Joey came in, right? [laughs]

Sadie: All for the better! Joey, what was it like for you being in this documentary? Especially, something very close to home, about your family roots. Did you ever think you’d be embarrassed by a new piece of unearthed family history or did you go in embracing every moment of it?

Joey: That's such a good question. I don't know if there's anything necessarily I'm embarrassed about. I mean, genealogy isn't really the most hip, cool, youngster activity. But the whole documentary was kind of like a spur-of-the-moment thing for me. It was going to be my sister, who's the oldest, but she became ill around the time that my dad was going. And so then I ended up going, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought, ‘OK, I'll probably be by myself most days, my dad will go off filming, and I'll just like fend for myself in various different countries that we go to.’ But then no, as soon as I got there, they were like, ‘Oh, let's get you in hair and makeup. And we need this from you.’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ [laughs] ‘I did not plan for this.’

I grew up going to Europe fairly often and my dad would take us to cemeteries and whatever and he's like, ‘This is so cool!’ And all my siblings and I would make fun of him. And so, I was definitely not enthusiastic at the beginning. But I guess adding the documentary part, and just kind of the fact that it was just me and my dad, it kind of changed my perspective a lot. I remember I used to hate going into museums and looking at art because it was just so boring to me, and it took so long. But then I remember there was this one specific time, I think it was in Munich, my dad and I were there and I was really upset that we were in this museum because I was so tired, and he really wanted to go. And he started playing this game with me. He was like, ‘You see that guy? He has all these arrows in his stomach, he's depicted in almost every single painting. So go around the room and find how many paintings has this guy with the arrows in him.’ 

And it really got me to look at every single painting. And this was when I was like, probably 13 or something. It was nice to have someone sit down with you and point out the interesting things, and kind of relate to you in a way that you wouldn't normally think about. And so, I think that if you're in a big group of people, or in a class, having to study something you may not be so interested in, but as my dad says, ‘When history is put into context of your life, it's really much more interesting. It's much more personal, and it really helps you connect with your own story and connect with other people's stories.’

Sadie: That’s incredibly wise. When you were in these other countries, did you ever feel like a bond to the land, knowing that your ancestors were from there?

Joey: Definitely, I feel that 100% in Vienna. I'm not sure necessarily if I feel it in Prague or say Israel, but in Vienna, it really does feel like somewhere I can settle down. Next summer, I'm in culinary school right now, I'm not sure if you know that, but one of your semesters in culinary school is called an externship. So, you go anywhere - it can be in America or not in America, and you work in a kitchen for one semester. And there's this one restaurant in Vienna, called Steirereck, and it was ranked the 18th best restaurant in the world last year on the 50 Best Restaurants, San Pellegrino list, and has two Michelin stars. And to me, that restaurant feels like Vienna. And it feels like sophistication and culture. And it just feels light. It doesn't feel heavy. When people think of Austrian food or German food, and just Austria and Germany in general, they think of these kinds of like dreadful backgrounds and terrible stories, but they forget the time before that - the largest empire in Europe. An empire that was the center of our culture for the world. And our family was part of that and people have always asked me like, what do I want my restaurant to be like when I'm older if I want to have a restaurant, and recently after going on this trip with my dad, I've decided that I want kind of a Vietnese restaurant and I want an Austrian restaurant to kind of portray that kind of elegance and culture that most restaurants don't exhibit.

Sadie: How much of that storytelling will go into your cooking and sharing those stories of your family and yourself?

Joey: I would say everything goes into my cooking. My dad has it, and my brother has it, and my mom has it, so I guess it's a genetic disease, but we all have Crohn's - and so every time I thought about cooking, it was always in relationship to my Crohn's - what can I eat? What can't I eat? But even though that could be the basis of the ingredients that I use, there needs to be a story behind it. There needs to be a reason why I am cooking. 

And I think culture and family is such an important way to do that. Because everyone always says, ‘I don't want the big chain restaurants, I want the little mom and pop shops, I want the restaurants where you can get like the home meals, the ones that feel like the traditions were passed on within your family.’ And I grew up, I can't eat them anymore, unfortunately, but I grew up eating my grandmother's Austrian cookies and pastries on all the holidays. And to me, that just feels right.

Sadie: That's where the heart is, right? I'm taking a step back to you, Randy, with of all the research you did, and all the planning you guys did beforehand, was there ever any moment where you guys were speaking to curators or historians, that maybe sent you on a different path, or got you even closer or maybe further away to finding that final gravestone?

Randy: Every time you find any clue it leads to more questions. It may answer or even usually just partially answer some other question. But there's always more, right? That's what I love about the genealogy. You never feel like, ‘OK, I'm done.’ There's always something else that you're gonna find. And so oftentimes, during this, I was worried that we would find something that would take us off the path because I wanted to get to Fioretta. And there are other paths. I mean, we're descended from the Maharal, this famous Rabbi in Prague, so most people, I think, would have shown that connection.

So, I was hoping we would be able to prove this lineup towards Italy, because I thought that would be interesting and interesting for me, but you never know if you're going to find a new document, it might completely change your conception of who these people are and how they were related. Oftentimes, there are, and this happens in one of the lines, and unfortunately, we have that, remember that big book that I say they let me touch... so that book is an amazing document that proves that the kid is the child of those two parents who were married previously, right? So, they easily could have been a child of the previous marriage, if you look at it from one perspective, but here the document says, ‘No, this is the kid who was born to the two of us.’

And so, to be able to find something that sort of really establishes the relationship when you're dealing with something 300 years ago is really lucky and very nice to have because a lot of times there's a lot of ambiguity. And there's a lot of the dry facts, but there's a lot of artistry in tracing things back. You really have to use your creativity and imagination, sometimes to understand how the evidence fits together in the most logical way and what you hope is the correct way, because you never know, after 300 years whether the document is written correctly, or there could always be mistakes. So, you're always trying to find a theory that will fit with all the evidence that you have.

Sadie: It’s so fascinating from a storytelling perspective too, because you're basically writing your family history from what you can find. There’s so much information at your fingertips, this could have been an evolving TV series, but the fact that you're able to tell all of this in two hours is remarkable.

There's a really great moment when the two of you are looking at the headstones and Joey, you ask your dad like, ‘What do you want me to put on there?’ And he says basically, that's in your hands. So out of sheer curiosity, because of that scene and having learned so much about your family lineage and legacy, what do you think your dad's legacy will be?

Joey: What would his legacy be? That's such an interesting question.

Randy: “He liked chocolate.” [laughs] Joey just got me chocolates for my birthday. I gained 10 pounds eating all the chocolates. “He loves chocolate.” You can put that on my tombstone. [laughs]

Joey: [laughs] I mean, obviously, you want to mention his big accomplishments. But I would say he's a very modest person. He never is going to mention his own accomplishments. He'll mention his kids, he'll mention his family, he'll mention the friends that he makes, but he'll never specifically say anything that he does is great.

Sadie: What do you hope audiences take away after watching your journey and love of genealogy and your journey of finding your roots, Randy?

Randy: I'm never good at takeaways…because, for me, it's not easy to package up the story and give it one meaning, I think it means it's going to mean different things to different people. Right? You touched on it already, one of the themes is, how do we pass on memory in history to the next generation? I think that's a big theme in the movie, but it's also about, the process of self-discovery, right? How do you figure out who you are, and what made you who you are? Genealogy is one of our tools. I always say it's a very narcissistic pursuit, usually, in the beginning, because you're focusing on yourself and who you are. But that's a big part of it. 

And we've had, at the couple of test screenings, the questions we get, and this is from Jews, but mostly non-Jews saying, ‘I want to now look into my own history, because my grandmother told me a story XYZ, and I want to go pursue that.’ And so, I think that's going to be one of the takeaways also is how to go on that journey of self-discovery. And then pass it on to the next generation, hopefully.

Sadie: What about you Joey, especially with the younger audience in mind?

Joey: With the younger audience in mind, I also wanted to touch on self-discovery, because I know that a very common theme today, among people my age is finding out who you are, what you want to be, and doing it in your own way. And I think that this movie has, if it will teach anyone anything, I just think that people shouldn't take anything for granted, but love should be unconditional. And if you're not feeling that, then you need to search outwards to different people because if the people that are your family aren't giving you what you deserve, then something's not right.

I also just think that people should never get the bare minimum of people, if you're not getting everyone's full attention, full love, then they're not worth it. And it took me a long time to finally realize that, but it's so much better when you get to a point. Because the people in your life that really matter are the ones who will give you unconditional love and support.

Randy: Yeah, and another takeaway, at least for the Jewish audience - there is this impression for Jews, at least that we can't know our history, it was all destroyed, and everybody was living on dirt floors. And this really explodes that myth, I think, in a good way. And I think of it, we all have thousands, tens of thousands of ancestors at that stage 500 years ago, potentially. And the question is finding them, but what it means is that we all have these fascinating, interesting people in our background. And so even if you can't trace back, you can still feel connected to the ones that you can and when we are able to build a documented line going back - I look at it as sort of like a scaffolding upon which other families then can build and connect. So, the more of these deep lines that we have, the more other people will be able to connect to them. And also, be able to have that experience of feeling connected.

And then the last thing is that Jews played such an integral role in history. So even in a ghetto where you think, OK, they're locked in, and they're not doing anything. And there's a milkmaid and a tailor, and they're writing books and dealing with the King of England and Popes, and poets and things like that - they're interacting at the very highest levels. And oftentimes, Jews have been sort of written out of the standard history. And I know one of my goals, and also Matthews too, is to reinsert that part of history where these Jews played a significant role in world events.

Fioretta will have it's world premiere at the 24th Annual Woodstock Film Festival on September 30, 2023, with a performance by The Maverick Sextet, performing classical works composed by Arnold Schoenberg.

Visit www.rubberringfilms.com for more film festival screenings and updates.