Branko Lustig to Speak about USC Shoah Foundation at Let’s Cee Film Festival

Schindler’s List producer Branko Lustig will play a key role in this year’s Let’s Cee Film Festival in Vienna, which welcomes filmmakers and film enthusiasts from all over Central and Eastern Europe.

Let’s Cee Film Festival will be held in Vienna, Oct. 2-11. It includes screenings of 91 features, documentaries and short films by Central and Eastern European artists as well as 70 additional events including master classes, panel discussions, Q&As and more.

Lustig will participate in the festival’s Oct. 5 panel discussion “About the Right Handling of Remembrance and Commemoration” along with Alexandra Föderl-Schmid, chief editor of Der Standard, and Oliver Rathkolb, professor at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. They will discuss the challenges connected to preserving a lasting culture of remembrance and commemoration – including the efforts of the USC Shoah Foundation to preserve testimonies of genocide survivors.

On Oct. 6, Lustig will lead the festival’s first-ever Educational Morning program, which Lustig founded to address the importance of taking a stand against extremist, right-wing ideology and racism through interdisciplinary methods and multimedia. The film Lauf, Junge, Lauf! will be screened, followed by a discussion with Lustig.

Also on Oct. 6, he will give a master class about his experiences as a Hollywood producer.

Lustig also curated the festival’s Anti-War Retrospective series of five films set during World War I and World War II. The films include Don’t Look Back, My Son, from Yugoslavia; Die Blechtrommel, from Germany; and Sunshine, an English-language film featuring Ralph Fiennes.

The first Croatian to ever win two Academy Awards (as producer of Schindler’s List and Gladiator), Lustig was awarded the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award last year.

In 1999, Lustig became the 50,000th Holocaust survivor to give testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation.