No Place On Earth (Film) Review

No Place On Earth

Released: 5th April 2013
RRP: TBC
Director: Janet Tobias
Starring: Saul Stermer, Sam Stermer, Sonia Dodyk, Sima Dodyk, Yetta Stermer
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 81

In October 1942, Esther Stermer, the matriarch of a Jewish family in the Ukraine, leads her family underground to hide from the pursuing Nazis - and stays nearly a year and a half. Their harrowing story of survival living in near total darkness in two cold, damp caves is one like no other ever told. It was life...like NO PLACE ON EARTH. (c) Magnolia

Ben Sachs (Chicago Reader) said:
"The movie is engaging but appallingly superficial when it considers the larger history of the Holocaust."

Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune) said:
"The story told by Janet Tobias' documentary "No Place on Earth" is enough to transcend the film's limitations."

Gary Goldstein (Los Angeles Times) said:
"Add one more extraordinary survival tale to the canon of Holocaust documentaries: "No Place on Earth.""

John Anderson (Variety) said:
"A substantial contribution to Holocaust cinema."

Nicolas Rapold (New York Times) said:
"The film mixes emotional accounts by proud survivors from two families with foreign-language re-enactments that are perhaps too faithfully murky."

Farran Smith Nehme (New York Post) said:
"The film is built from moving, frank interviews with survivors from two families who hid, speaking over and around extensive re-enactments."

Sam Adams (AV Club) said:
"No Place On Earth mixes present-day interviews with re-enactments that illustrate the speakers' words without adding much to them."

David Fear (Time Out New York) said:
"This story is both uplifting and awe-inspiring. It deserves to be told better."

Lily Janiak (Village Voice) said:
"Unfortunately, the telling, by director Janet Tobias, is no match for the story."

Tina Hassannia (Slant Magazine) said:
"A remarkable story made almost unremarkable in the hands of lazy filmmaking."



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