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Plays in Shorts Program: Between Us
Saturday, June 13
11:15 AM - 12:45 PM

Regal Gallery Place

701 7th St NW, Washington, DC 20001

for all screenings

The Grandfather Puzzle

Film Languages

Hungarian, English

Director

Ora DeKornfeld

Producers

Zsófia Paczolay, Máté Artur Vincze, Noémi Veronika Szakonyi

Contact

Ora Dekornfeld pdekornfeld@gmail.com

The filmmaker’s 100-year-old Hungarian grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, spends his days immersed in jigsaw puzzles, refusing to speak about his past. Seeking to bridge the silence that has defined their relationship, the filmmaker travels to Hungary to photograph locations from his life and transform them into puzzles they might one day solve together.

When she arrives at his childhood home—a castle now repurposed as a boarding school—she is met with an unexpected question: “Has the baroness come to reclaim the castle?” What begins as a simple attempt at connection becomes a darkly comic exploration of identity, belonging, and the stubborn complexities of historical memory.

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Ora DeKornfeld

Director, The Grandfather Puzzle; Co-director, Stalin Boys

Ora DeKornfeld is an Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, CNN, and Netflix. Her Emmy-nominated short USA V SCOTT premiered at Tribeca and was acquired by The New Yorker. She was the cinematographer and editor on MIJA (Sundance, Disney+) and part of the editing team on Elizabeth Lo’s MISTRESS DISPELLER.

Most recently, she directed the short STALIN BOYS, which won both the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize at SXSW 2026 and will premiere on New York Times Op-Docs.

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