“A thorough, thoughtful and disturbing documentary.”
Kenny Turan
LA TIMES
AMIR BAR-LEV
The Restoration
When Fighter was made in the late 1990s, it felt like a film about the past. Antisemitism – especially here at home in the U.S. was seemingly at an all-time low and fascism was a chapter in a history textbook. The arc of democracy looked long, and it bent in one direction. None of that is in the rear-view mirror anymore.
The 2024 ADL audit recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the US — the highest figure in its 46-year history. Freedom House has now documented twenty consecutive years of global democratic decline. The story two old Czech Jews insisted on telling in the late 1990’s isn't a period piece anymore. It's a dispatch.
The film's producers and I, are restoring Fighter from its original SD DigiBeta format into a beautiful 2k digital scan. After 25 years, the technology available to properly rejuvenate this film has finally become accessible and effective. The film hasn't existed outside its out-of-print DVD, and we're working hard to bring it back to life. Over the course of the next few months, we will be working to repair our original copy of Fighter to bring it back to audiences. We are creating a set of materials to accompany the film in order to increase its capacity for dialogue and learning in community or educational spaces.