5 out of 5 stars (One of the best I’ve seen in a long time)
As many of my reviews are of superhero fantasy and genre escapism, nothing can top a story that really happened. No fictionalized act of daring do or hair-thin escape can be as emotionally involving as a real one, and that is exactly what the new documentary Unbroken seeks to highlight. Filmmaker Beth Lane uses the story of her own family to remind us of the horrors of WWII Germany, a remarkable and moving one that would sound like something in the movies if it wasn’t clarified as truth by its subjects. Add well-chosen moments of animated visuals, archival footage, and Lane’s own discoveries in the present, and UnBroken sneaks up to become one of the strongest film entries of this young year.
During WWII, the seven Jewish Weber siblings narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Nazis through luck, grit, and the kindness of others. Each sibling recounts their experiences during the harrowing event and what followed in the years after, all the while staying together as a family.
UnBroken is quite an involving documentary. Running a crisp 90 minutes, the film combines its various stylistic elements well and maintains an emotional tone from beginning to end. Lane smartly lets her family’s interviews take center stage and drive the story while using the scenes where she visits the real locations mentioned to give us better context of the locations today. The doc brings home how personally scary and uncertain the time period was and even shows a part of history involving Russian involvement that I’d never heard about before. Seeing the family interact and remember their experiences in the present also highlights how the events have stuck with them, but their bonds have weathered it all.
UnBroken also lionizes the various people who opened their hearts to the Webers even at their own peril. They couldn’t have survived without the kindness of others and the family being alive today to tell these stories is proof of the positive impact such empathy can bring. It’s a tearjerker that serves as an eternally welcome reminder that good human decency can mean the difference between someone’s life or death UnBroken shows a family’s hardships through one of the darkest times in human history while also championing familial strength and the importance of empathy. See it! The film will release on Netflix on April 23, 2025.