JIFF: Three Minutes - A Lengthening

“Three Minutes is fascinating… electrifying… A reminder of what a magical medium film is — how unique it is in its ability to capture so many moments and so much life” - Indiewire

In 2009, Glenn Kurtz discovered a crumbling 16mm colour home movie in his parents’ closet — amateur footage his grandfather David shot in 1938 on a European holiday. The film included three minutes of what would turn out to be the only known footage of the predominantly Jewish town of Nasielsk, Poland — David Kurtz’s birthplace — just one year before the Nazi occupation would destroy the community, leaving fewer than 100 survivors of the Holocaust. 

Decades later, Dutch director Bianca Stigter — with the help of narrator Helena Bonham Carter — dives deep into this precious fragment. Through inventive assemblage and intimate reflections, the footage unfurls into a poignant cinematic meditation on memory and loss that demonstrates the power of the film medium to bear witness. 

Rating

E

Language

English, Polish, German, Yiddish

Cast

Helena Bonham Carter

Director

Bianca Stigter