09/10/2023
Thank you Tallgrass Film Association for awarding our film an Honorable Mention. A Prayer For My Mother: The Eva Brettler Story is an animated film that chronicles the extraordinary saga of Holocaust survivor Eva Brettler – a child facing brutality and profound loss who finds sustenance in faith and her own dreams for the future. From the loss of her parents to a forced death march across Europe, young Eva survives Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps, the destruction of her family, and the near destruction of European Jewry to emerge, with a tender heart and faith intact, crediting the goodness and decency of helpers and caretakers she encountered along the way.
This film was created by Ruben Barrett, Raisa Effress, Sophia Evans, Lauren Fuchs, Katie Hadsock-Longarzo, Ian Kim, Eve Levy, Timothy Lim, Asher Meron, Marion Ochoa, Isabella Rahi, Hank Schoen, and Olivia Uzielli, working with artist mentor C. Lily Ericsson. The film’s score was created by Charles Weiner, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, a filmmaker/composer and the grandson of Eva Brettler. Executive produced by Cheri Gaulke and Samara Hutman.
The teen filmmakers are in grades 9-12, aged 13-17 and come from southern California schools, Harvard-Westlake School, Brentwood School, George Washington, Marymount High, and Rise Kohyang High School; and from Lower Merion High School in Pennsylvania. They came together in a summer program at Harvard-Westlake School created by The Righteous Conversations Project, a collaboration of Holocaust survivors and teens. RCP was founded in Los Angeles in 2011 to meet the precious moment of intersection between the last living witnesses to the Holocaust, and the young generation to whom they will hand their living memories, and the lessons they have to teach us for enduring stewardship.
