KIKE LIKE ME

DOK.FEST 2008, audience's favorite!

People have always asked Canadian journalist and film director Jamie Kastner if he is Jewish. In return he asks himself why everyone wants to know and what difference it actually makes. To find an answer, he launches into a personal and highly idiosyncratic journey. By telling everyone he meets around the world that he is Jewish, Jamie runs into utterly insane situations. He receives a shotgun bar mitzvah from Hasids in Brooklyn, NY; he gets kicked out of the home of the right-wing former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan; he causes a near-riot in a Parisian suburb simply by asking Arabs what they think about Jews; in Amsterdam he talks to non-Jewish "Jewish" soccer fans; in Germany he meets non-Jewish Klezmer musicians and the "dominatrix" behind Berlin's largest Jewish memorial; Krakow has turned into a Jewish theme park and there is a hot dog stand at the Auschwitz entrance. This is a provocative, hilarious and distressing around-the-globe trek, which is bound to provoke both laughter and tears.

And at the end, is Jamie actually Jewish? Well, why do YOU want to know?

"Do you want to blame me for Israel? Do you want to set me up with your daughter? So why do you want to know? What is it in yourself, audience, that you are prejudging?" Jamie Kastner

"I’ve always seen this not as a film for Jews particularly or about Jews but about identity, about what it means to be an outsider. There are certain issues for those who are perceived as other. One tries to gauge where the asker is coming from." Jamie Kastner