June Zero

Set in Israel in the days immediately following the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of Hitler’s “final solution”, June Zero explores the pivotal event from a unique perspective through the loosely interconnected stories of three people on the periphery of history. As punishment for stealing, David, a 13-year-old Libyan immigrant, is sent to work at a factory that manufactures bakery ovens. Bright but precocious, David overhears his boss has accepted a clandestine commission from Haim, the captain of police, to build an oven specifically for the cremation of Eichmann’s body since cremation is forbidden in Judaism. As the guard to Eichmann, Haim also has the task of guarding against threats of vigilantism before the date of execution. Wracked by this huge responsibility, he takes a moment to express his admiration for Officer Micha, Eichmann’s chief interrogator and Polish survivor of Auschwitz. Micha’s history leads him to be selected to meet a group of American delegates in Poland, and he travels back for the first time since leaving the camp to tell his story. Director Jake Paltrow’s vividly textured work uses these disparate points of view to paint an image of the diasporic Jewish people and, in its unorthodox narrative approach, reminds us that the same histories are experienced differently by people all over the world, and we are connected through shared traumatic pasts.