Teddy Katz, as seen in Tantura directed by Alon Schwarz. Photo credit: Yonathan Weitzman. Courtesy of Reel Peak Films.
Alon Schwarz’s Tantura, which won the Philadelphia Film Festival’s Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature, reminds me of the 1990 West German narrative feature The Nasty Girl. In Michael Verhoeven’s movie, Lena (Sonja Rosenberger) is a postwar student who unearths her town’s fascist past. She literally has denazification files dusted off at the town’s archives, and against all odds, insists upon revealing the awful truth she has discovered about the now complacent townsfolk, much to their horror.