2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Sosua: Make a Better World tells the story of Jewish and Dominican teenagers in New York City's Washington Heights, who together with the legendary theater director, Liz Swados, put on a musical about the Dominican rescue of 800 Jews from Hitler’s Germany. Award winning filmmakers Peter Miller and Renee Silverman interweave an intimate, behind-the-scenes portrait of the late Swados with this little-known Holocaust story.

Through Swados’ visionary direction, the young actors are introduced to a morally complex history in which the Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo -- a murderous strongman – took in the Jews, largely because they were white. At the same time, he was also killing tens of thousands of Haitians because they were not. The film draws on rare archival images to illustrate the little-known Dominican rescue effort - from newsreel clips of FDR's Evian Conference and evocative shots of boatloads of refugees in New York harbor to scenes of working and domestic life in the rural Dominican outpost of Sosua, where the Jews launched their new lives.

 But the main story lies in the present. Over the course of the film, we are engrossed by the alchemy of an extraordinary theater artist who enables the cast members who live side by side but rarely interact, to come together through the making the musical.  Sosua is also a homage to Swados' artistic vision and her commitment to working with untrained young people, generously deploying her talent to create theater that works as a catalyst for transforming lives.