The writer and director of The Anne Frank Gift Shop on using humour to process horror
Read full article on the magazine: https://hashtaglegend.com/the-writer-and-director-of-the-anne-frank-gift-shop-on-using-humour-to-process-horror BY #legend Dec 27, 2024 Audience Award winner for Best Short at last month’s Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival, The Anne Frank Gift Shop is not your typical take on the Holocaust. Writer and director Mickey Rapkin talks to Jaz Kong about using humour to process horror “The holocaust” and “humour” are not terms one would expect to find in the same sentence, let alone the description of a popular film. But, as Mickey Rapkin says, “We’re living in strange times. Anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise. The Anne Frank Gift Shop takes aim at a very real problem – a generation with little awareness of the Holocaust – and attempts to solve it with humour by meeting this audience where they live.” The Anne Frank Gift Shop, which won the Audience Award for Best Short after its screening at the 25th Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival in November, is a 15-minute short film that imagines a meeting between The Anne Frank House and the New York design firm they’ve hired to renovate their gift shop to appeal to young people. Its mockumentary style is reminiscent of The Office or Parks and Recreation, as are the dynamics between the characters – including representatives from the museum, creative brains from the ad agency and a young influencer who is mocked early on in the film for her comment after visiting The Anne Frank House that “the attic was big”. Mickey Rapkin Rapkin, who wrote and directed The Anne Frank Gift Shop as well as wrote the book that inspired the film series Pitch Perfect, says the project grew out of a sense of real concern. “A landmark 2020 study – the US Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey interviewing adults aged 18-39, also known as Millennials and Gen Z, across 50 states in the US, and later on, other parts of the world as well – by the Conference on Jewish...
