UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Penn State faculty member's feature documentary about a French business consultant who sets out to kill his father’s Nazi executioner will screen at 7 p.m. Feb. 6 at Northwestern University.
The preview screening of "Cojot" is presented by Northwestern University’s Holocaust Educational Foundation.
Produced and directed by Penn State assistant professor and award-winning filmmaker Boaz Dvir, “Cojot” tells the little-known story of Michel Cojot, a Holocaust survivor who hunted down former Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie and wound up playing a key role in one of history’s most daring rescue operations. Dvir's credits include “Jessie’s Dad” and “A Wing and a Prayer."
Attendees of the Northwestern screening — which is free and open to the public and takes place at Kresge Hall’s The Forum (Room 1-515) — will watch an advanced rough cut of “Cojot.” The event will feature a question-and-answer session with Dvir, who directs Penn State’s Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative.
In recent months, the rough cut of “Cojot” screened at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, Columbia University’s Global Center in Paris, New York University, and Virginia Tech, among other venues.
Narrated by iconic actor Judd Nelson (John Bender in “The Breakfast Club”), the documentary has been generating a buzz. After watching an early rough cut, The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman wrote: “It wasn’t until I saw Boaz Dvir’s very moving forthcoming documentary about him, ‘Cojot,’ that I truly understood Michel’s life, and perhaps the message of it.”
Penn State’s National Public Radio station, WPSU, devoted an episode of its “Take Note” to “Cojot.”
In attendance at the Feb. 6 screening will be one of Michel Cojot’s grandchildren, Lucas Cojot, a Northwestern undergraduate student, and Matthew Einstein, CEO of Tradition Pictures in Los Angeles who serves as one of the documentary’s producers.
“Matt and I are honored to screen an advanced rough cut of ‘Cojot’ at Northwestern’s well-respected Holocaust Educational Foundation,” said Dvir, author of the forthcoming Rowman & Littlefield book, “Saving Israel.” “We’re excited to have Lucas join us. I know his grandfather would be extremely proud of him.”
Sarah Cushman, director of Northwestern’s Holocaust Educational Foundation, said she is “excited to bring this film that tells a compelling story of revenge and rescue to the NU and Evanston communities and to highlight the role of one of our students’ relatives in a harrowing historical event.”