Misha and the Wolves

In 1997 Misha Defonseca published a memoir: at six years old, after the Nazis invaded Belgium, she had walked across Europe alone looking for her parents, and a pack of wolves had protected her along the way. The book was translated into eighteen languages, film rights sold, and Defonseca became known worldwide. Then she fell out with her publisher. Sam Hobkinson's documentary first builds the story as told, gets the viewer to believe it, and then starts taking it apart. The Belgian researcher Evelyne Haendel, herself a Jewish Holocaust survivor, follows the documents and finds the records one by one. In 2008 Defonseca admitted the account was entirely invented. Her real name was Monique De Wael, and she was not Jewish but the daughter of a Catholic family arrested and killed for being in the resistance. The film does not stop at exposing the lie; it asks why so many people wanted to believe it. Who it's for: Viewers who like stories of fabrication, questions of memory and testimony, and documentaries that play with their own construction. Who it's not for: The telling deliberately misleads the viewer, and some will find that method manipulative. The subject of exploiting Holocaust narratives is also heavy.