Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 3 pm
Soviet Jews denied exit visas in 1970 hatch a plan to hijack an empty plane and escape under the guise of attending a family wedding, View the harrowing tale before it opens wide in theaters.
SYNOPSIS
Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Soviet Jews who were denied exit visas, plots to “hijack” an
empty plane and escape the USSR.
It started as a fantasy, Operation Wedding, as outrageous as it was simple: Under the disguise of a trip to a
local family wedding, the hijackers would buy every ticket on a small 12-seater plane, so there would be no
passengers but them, no innocents in harm’s way. The group’s pilot would take over the controls and fly
the 16 runaways into the sky, over the Soviet border, on to Sweden, bound for Israel.
Caught by the KGB a few steps from boarding, they were sentenced to years in the gulag and two
were sentenced to death; they never got on a plane.
While the Soviet press writes “the criminals received their punishment”, tens of thousands of people in the
free world demand “Let My People Go!“ and as the Iron Curtain opens a crack for 300,000 Soviets Jews
wanting to flee, the group members are held back to pay the price of freedom for everyone else.
45 years later, filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov reveals the compelling story of her parents,
leading characters of the group, “heroes” in the West but “terrorists” in Russia, even today.
Anat and her mother Sylva, retrace the group’s journey from a Soviet airport to a KGB prison.
Cigarettes and vodka fuel interviews with the parents filled with intelligence and humor. Archives,
reenactments and interviews with KGB officers enhance this inspiring story of young Jews who imagined
freedom and cracked the Iron Curtain
Operation Wedding: a documentary
Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 3 pm
Soviet Jews denied exit visas in 1970 hatch a plan to hijack an empty plane and escape under the guise of attending a family wedding, View the harrowing tale before it opens wide in theaters.