Wrong Side of the Bus

In this wonderful new documentary by Rod Freedman (Uncle Chatzkel), Sidney Bloch, a professor of psychiatry, loving father, communal stalwart and author, returns to South Africa, determined to resolve feelings that have troubled him for more than forty years.

Accompanied by his teenage son, who turns out to be his father's harshest critic, Sidney must confront his past. Growing up in Apartheid South Africa, where he abhorred the system but did nothing to oppose it, Sid fled to Israel the day after his medical graduation. A sense of guilt and shame accompanied him throughout his later move to Australia. How does a man who lost fourteen relatives in the Holocaust come to behave in this way?

Freedman gives us an absorbing and energetic sketch of present-day South Africa in which he speaks to victims of Apartheid, Sid's former colleagues who stayed to make a difference, and current political activists.

To be introduced by the director, with a Q&A session to follow the screening.