The Missing Tale

The fractured history of the Jews of Cochin, India is explored in this fascinating and utterly engrossing journey that takes viewers around the globe from Eastern Europe to Israel and India. Director Klára Trencsényi’s first impressions are formed by her encounter with Sarah Cohen, one of the last remaining members of the city’s once-thriving Paradesi Jewish community — Sephardic Jews who arrived in Cochin after the Spanish Inquisition. These initial perceptions are challenged when she meets Babu, a 60-year-old member of the Black Jewish Malabar community who are said to have arrived in Cochin thousands of years earlier, but who were considered inferior by the Paradesi Jews. Racism within the Cochin Jewish communities compels Klara to reflect on her own hidden Eastern European Jewish identity. (Miami Jewish Film Festival)