Dear Mr. Waldman (Michtavim le America)

synopsis

Hilik, a 10-year-old boy living in Tel Aviv in the early '60s, wants more than anything to make his parents happy to try to compensate for their suffering in the Holocaust. Moishe, Hilik's father, has never really accepted the fact that he is the only survivor in his family and he is constantly sinking back into his memories of those times. He believes that his lost son from his first marriage did not die in Auschwitz but miraculously escaped to America and became an assistant to President Kennedy. The past threatens to consume the family and Hilik decides he must do something to test his father's love for him. Peled draws out the essence of the soul of the family that balances their quest for unity with the haunting ghosts of the past in this highly accomplished period piece.