Our Participant Arkadij Khaet discusses his movie “Mazel Tov Cocktail”

Arkadij Khaet’s half-hour film “Masel Tov Cocktail” premiered in 2020 at the Max Ophüls Film Festival in Germany and since then been screened in Europe, the United States, South America and Asia.
Besides all the festivals that have featured the film and awards it has won (e.g. the Civis Media Prize, considered to be one of Europe’s most important awards for projects related to topics of integration and cultural diversity), one reason for its popularity may be the availability on the Public German broadcaster’s ARD Mediathek for several months. It was one of the most watched movies in 2020 on the platform.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency published a comprehensive interview with the filmmaker writing: “Khaet drew from his personal experiences in writing the film, with Dima (the movie’s protagonist) working through encounters from the director’s life. He compared it to a “road trip” through a small German city condensed into one day. The common theme is how Germans try to classify Dima’s Jewishness through various points of view.”
Read the full interview with the ELES and DAGESH scholar as well as current DialoguePerspectives participant here.
You can find the trailer with English subtitles here.

Enjoy!