Mark Reviews Movies: MY NAME IS SARA

My Name Is Sara, Strand Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 21, 2022

The only measure of success in My Name Is Sara is survival. There is no other story being told or concern outside of that goal that matters more than surviving in this film. Since it's based on a true story, that means the ending is more or less a given, but that does not lessen the impact of director Steven Oritt's film, his narrative feature debut and a suspenseful study of a teenage girl's ability to adapt herself to her surroundings and to the perceptions of so many people in order to stay alive.

David Himmelstein's screenplay covers the course of a few years in the early 1940s—shortly after the German military's invasion of Poland, as Nazi forces move eastward, until the end of the war in Europe. The main character is Sara (Zuzanna Suroway), who is 13 when the Nazis arrive in her hometown near the border of Ukraine, and our introduction to her comes in the middle of her fleeing from soldiers with her older brother Moishe (Konrad Cichon). The rest of their family have remained in the ghetto in Korets.

Brother and sister are soon separated, leaving Sara to fend for herself. She finds a farm just inside Ukraine, where Pavlo (Eryk Lubos) and his wife Nadya (Michalina Olszanska) tend to a wheat field and raise two young sons. The husband offers Sara, who denies her Jewish heritage, a job as a nanny.

The tension here, of course, is that one mistaken motion in the sign of the cross, one misplaced phrase in a prayer, or one word of Hebrew spoken in the middle of her dreaming sleep will give away the truth. There are complications to Sara's deception, including her need to hide her knowledge of Nadya's affair with another man and her willingness to indulge at least some of Pavlo's untoward advances. Then, there are the raids from both German soldiers and Russian partisans—both groups equally suspicious for different reasons.

The fact that this couple, as well as their extended family (who revel in a celebration that involves kicking a stereotypical Jew out of their home), possess little sense of compassion and at least some degree of anti-Semitic attitudes adds to the suspense, of course. Beyond that, though, it makes a pointed observation of how the atrocities of the Nazi genocide began and continued in front of so many ordinary people—not only because of fear, but also because of tacit approval or, at least, a cold absence of disapproval.

This is a well-performed telling (even if the actors' English is inconsistent), especially in the work of Surowy, who has to balance how much to convey and hide at every given moment. The impact of My Name Is Sara comes from the build-up of all those moments, and it's not entirely obvious how potent that is until the release of a climactic moment—a loud and clear proclamation of the truth without any conditions or fear.

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