The Last Laugh

A hit from last year’s festival returns for one night only! They say that comedy is tragedy plus time. But how much time has to pass before it’s all right to use a traumatizing event as a framing device for a joke? Can the Holocaust ever be funny? Director Ferne Pearlstein (Sumo East and West, Imelda) gathers top comedians and prominent Jewish figures (Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Chris Rock, Shalom Auslander), and candidly asks this and other piercing questions. These voices are interwoven with classic movie clips, rare archival footage of the cabarets that actually existed in concentration camps, and an intimate portrait of Auschwitz survivor Renee Firestone, inviting us to laugh, think, remember, and contemplate a possibility that at first seems incomprehensible.

Q&A filmmaker Ferne Pearlstein