Maven's Nest
Reel Life: Flick Pix
Makes movingly clear their marriage ceremony in the concentration camp was just a small part of the Baus’ lives and their significance
By Nora Lee Mandel
Bau: Artist at War
Directed by: Sean McNamara
Written by: Deborah Smerecnik and Marc Griffith & Michelle P. Griffith, based on the 1998 memoir by Joseph Bau originally called Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry?, and In The Name of God, the diaries of Rebecca Tennenbaum Bau
Produced by: Deborah Smerecnik, Marc Griffith & Michelle P. Griffith, Sean McNamara David Brookwell,
2hrs 10 mins. Rated PG-13.
U.S. In English and brief German.
With: Emile Hirsch, Inbar Lavi, Eugene Lipinsky, Pam Kearns, Yan Tual, Adam Tsekhman, Edward Foy, Josh Blacker, Josh Zuckerman, Chris Cope, and Tori Griffith
Released by Show Business Direct Distribution- September 26, 2025 in theaters
The sweet love story at the center of Bau: Artist at War was briefly seen in a concentration camp wedding in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). Now that unusual couple deservedly gets a feature film of their own that emphasizes their strengths for resilience and resistance within the Holocaust. American director Sean McNamara has specialized in despite-all-odds true stories, including The Miracle Season (2018) and Soul Surfer (2011).
This film opens in the bright sun of colorful 1971 Tel Aviv at the artist studio workshop of Joseph Bau (convincingly played across 30+ years by Emile Hirsch). Filled with his paintings, drawings, prints, posters, and self-designed projectors for his first-in-Israel animations, he is seen secretly working on forging passports for the Mossad. But an attorney comes from Vienna to take his deposition for the murder trial of his sadistic Nazi nemesis in the Plaszów concentration camp. The dark past that haunts him, and is illustrated throughout by Bau’s own starkly expressive charcoal drawings of his experiences, is brought up front: My mind can’t tell the difference between memories and reality.
In an impressive mix of archival footage, animation, and Bau’s serious and satirical art, Bau re-lives first encountering the violent soldier Franz Gruen (played by Yan Tual) when Krakow, Poland’s Jewish ghetto was liquidated in 1943. Bau had been studying graphics, cartography, and calligraphy at the city’s fine arts academy and became known in the ghetto underground since 1941 for putting his skills to use forging identification cards to help Jews slip out. When the surviving residents are forced into the grim slave labor camp, the Jewish secretary Mietek Pemper (played by Chris Cope) to the mercurial Camp Comandante Amon Goeth (played by South African actor Josh Blacker) called in Bau as a replacement mapmaker for the one shot out of pique. Cleverly, Bau points out his expertise in Gothic lettering, the Nazis’ favorite, for additional projects, like more signage that enables his movement around the camp. Bau tries to use this new connection to protect his father Abraham (played by British Eugene Lipinski). But while Bau keeps up prisoners’ spirits with optimism and visual anti-Nazi jokes, the humorless Gruen is promoted with more power over life and death.
From the brown-tinged ghetto to the black-and-white cinematography of the camp, a pretty nurse keeps incidentally crossing Bau’s path - Rebecca Tennenbaum (played by Israeli Inbar Lavi, Eight Gifts of Hanukkah). While Bau hastens to meet Goeth’s deadlines and specifications for multiple map copies, he flirts with her despite the atmosphere of death. Bau charmingly perceives colorful flowers around her as their romance blossoms and grows. (Canadian Shawn Seifert was the Director of Photography.)
Her skills as a cosmetologist became known in the camp (her pedicures saved limping prisoners’ lives), and she too gets called into Goeth’s office to replace a murdered unsatisfactory worker, as his manicurist. She feigns not knowing German, among her many languages, so she can understand conversations and read the documents on his desk – then warns prisoners to hide when their names are on execution lists.
As the war and the deaths grind on, Joseph and Rebecca become friends with another Jew in Goeth’s office, Izhak Stern (played by Adam Tsekhman), the accountant liaison for the factory of Oskar Schindler (played by Australian Edward Foy). The couple realize the significance of the workers’ list being formulated in 1944 – but it was 50 years before the full O. Henry-like twist was revealed how their names were or not added to that famous list. The film keeps up the suspense, as this telling actually minimizes their incredible luck. In an emotionally climactic scene, Bau uses verbal pyrotechnics to rain justice down on Gruen.
Photographs accompany a detailed concluding scroll about the couple’s accomplishments during and after the Holocaust. More of Bau’s art can be seen at the Joseph Bau House Museum in Tel Aviv, whose future is currently endangered.
The Baus are not the only “match that Hitler made”. Holocaust survivors have cynically referred to their romantic relationships in feature documentaries, including Steal A Pencil For Me and Four Seasons Lodge, or even Love It Was Not. But Bau: Artist at War makes movingly clear that marriage ceremony in the camp was just a small part of their lives and their significance.
10/3/2025
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
Complete Index to Nora Lee Mandel's Movie Reviews
My reviews have appeared on: FF2 Media; Film-Forward; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
To the Mandel Maven's Nest Reel Life: Flick Pix
Copyright © 2025