Writer-director David Bezmozgis is cautiously optimistic about the fate of his flick, “Natasha,” adapted from the title story in his critically acclaimed collection (“Natasha and other stories,” 2004) and marking his second outing as a filmmaker. “Natasha” is the first film to explore the little known Russian-born Jewish subculture in Toronto that was spawned from…
Natalie Portman’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness” might be the most anticipated film adaptation of a work of prose (Amos Oz’s incomparable memoir of the same name, 2002) at the current New York Jewish Film Festival. But Russian-speaking Jews are rooting for “Natasha.” This film, by Latvian Canadian writer and filmmaker David Bezmozgis, is…
In the recently published memoir “A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka,” Lev Golinkin recounts the story of his family’s 1989 departure from the rapidly disintegrating Soviet Union. The Golinkins make their way to America, relying on the kindness of strangers; unsure of what they might find, they are guided largely by the…
● THE BETRAYERS By David Bezmozgis Little, Brown, 240 pages, $26 David Bezmozgis’s slim new novel, “The Betrayers,” seems at first deceptively simple, then, at second glance, deceptively complex. Set against a historical and political background that becomes too heavy a burden to bear on its slender scaffolding, it is the story of a noble…
The first thing I noticed about the writer David Bezmozgis when I sat down to breakfast with him in Brooklyn in late September was the tattoo on his forearm — a blue cursive Cyrillic D framed by a diamond. I first met Bezmozgis in 2010, and we’ve since become friends, and I’ve never shaken the…
Photo: David Franco A decade after its publication, Canadian author David Bezmozgis is turning his debut short story collection, “Natasha and Other Stories,” into a film. As with “Victoria Day,” his first cinematic endeavor in 2009, Bezmozgis, a graduate of the University of Southern California’s film school, is both writing and directing the project. The…
Back in the early 1980s, the Russians were coming. Not the Cold Warriors, but the Jewish children, with names like Yana and Inna and Igor. Each child seemed impossibly pale — pale hair, pale eyes, pale skin, pale lips, pale hand clutching the hand of his or her mother, a woman, in contrast, impossibly bright…
How one of the most popular Jewish books of the modern era explained everything from Kabbalah to cosmology, astronomy, geography, botany, zoology and medicine. Novelist David Bezmozgis and filmmaker Richard J. Lewis exchange letters on “Barney’s Version.” Will Justin Timberlake star in the upcoming Three Stooges movie? A film about Europe’s largest Jewish cemetery and…
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