Surviving Malka Leifer (Documentary)

Rating:

Director: Adam Kamien
Producer: Ivan O'Mahoney,Edwina Waddy,Joel Pearlman
Screenwriter: Jane Usher,Ivan O'Mahoney,Adam Kamien
Cinematographer: Bonnie Elliott,Jensen Cope,Marcus Cropp
Composer: Freya Berkhout
Editor: Jane Usher
Featured Subjects: Ashley Brown,Matan Akiva,Shana Aaronson,Ben Sapper,Elly Sapper,Avital Riber-Oron,Nicole Meyer,Ted Baillieu,Dassi Erlich,Aaron Rabinowitz,Yehuda Fried,Meyer Seewald,Leah Boulton,Malcolm Turnbull

Viewer Advice: Contains themes of child sexual abuse.

The inside story of a titanic struggle for justice – crossing years and international borders – within Melbourne’s Jewish community.

In 2008, allegations emerged that Malka Leifer, the headmistress of the girls’ campus of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Melbourne’s inner south-east, had committed grievous crimes against three young students under her care, sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper. It was the catalyst for a reckoning; but before police investigations could get underway, Leifer fled overseas under the cloak of darkness with the assistance of the school. Thus began an extradition battle that would last for the better part of a decade, and a broader quest for justice that revealed a web of international intrigue, legal loopholes and political corruption as well as a deeper culture of silence around sexual abuse.

Adam Kamien has followed up his AACTA-nominated debut, The Speedway Murders, with another excoriating true-crime feature – this time, documenting the struggle undertaken by the sisters and their supporters to bring Leifer back to Australia and help carve out a path for fellow survivors, and what it cost them. Filmed over five years and featuring firsthand testimony from Erlich, Meyer and Sapper alongside interviews with politicians and journalists who worked on the case, Surviving Malka Leifer is a compelling portrait of courage in the face of unimaginable adversity.


———

Producer Ivan O’Mahoney is a guest of the festival and will be in attendance at both sessions of the film.