Seven Siblings Survive Nazi Germany In Documentary ‘UnBroken’ – Specialty Preview

It’s quiet on the indie front. Oscar contenders linger in theaters ahead of the March 2 Academy Awards ceremony that will close the book on 2024. The Indie Spirits unspool tomorrow. The Berlinale, with prizes to be handed out Sunday — along with Sundance last month and SXSW next — are planting cinema’s new crop of independents.

Neon is out with horror The Monkey, which appears to be scaling the heights in wide release. Anora is still on screens. A24’s The Brutalist continues its run.

Relative newcomer Universal Language by Matthew Rankin, from Oscilloscope, expands to 24 screens from two last weekend, adding runs in the New York and Los Angeles area along with Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Austin. The Cannes audience award-winner grossed $51k its first week at two theaters.

New in limited release: Greenwich Entertainment debuts documentary UnBroken by first-time director Beth Lane at the Quad in NYC and at Laemmle Town Center in LA, and on demand. Seven siblings evade capture and death and ultimately escaped Nazi Germany following their mother’s incarceration and murder at Auschwitz. After being hidden by a benevolent farmer, the children — Alfons, Senta, Ruth, Gertrude, Renee, Judith and Bela Weber — spent two years on their own in war-torn Germany. The director is the daughter of Bela, the youngest sibling.

Emboldened by their father’s mandate that they stay together the children fight through hunger, loneliness, rape, bombings and fear. But their journey culminates with a painful ultimatum. Separated from their father, they are told that they must declare themselves orphans to escape to a new life in America. This salvation would become what would finally tear them apart, not to be reunited for another 40 years.

Premiered at the Heartland Film Festival in 2023 where it won Best Premiere Documentary Feature, going on to screen at Doc NYC and other festivals across the U.S. It won audience awards at RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina, Julien Dubuque International Film Festival in Iowa and Berkshire International Film Festival in Massachusetts.

Magnolia Pictures/Magnet Releasing open TIFF-premiering action thriller The Quiet Ones on 17 screens including NYC’s IFC Center and the Laemmle LA, and on demand. Inspired by real events, this is the story of the biggest and most spectacular heist in Danish history and the complex preparations by a team of ambitious and uncompromising criminals required to pull it off. In 2008, Kasper, a boxer with few chances left in life, is offered the opportunity to plan the robbery by its foreign initiators. At the risk of losing his family and everything that matters to him, he takes on the challenge in a bid to break all records. Directed by Frederik Louis Hviid, written by Anders Frithiof August. Starring Gustav Giese, Reda Kateb, Amanda Collin.

Music Box Films’ genre label Doppelgänger Releasing debuts home invasion horror Invader by Mickey Keating. Produced by Joe Swanberg. A young woman arrives in the Chicago suburbs and begins to suspect that something terrible has happened to her missing cousin, but soon realizes that her greatest fears don’t even begin to scratch the surface. Stars Vero Maynez and Colin Huerta.

Opens on six screens including Alamo Drafthouse theaters in lower Manhattan, LA and Austin and the Music Box in Chicago.

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