Jacky Comforty’s 2000 documentary, The Optimists, tells the story of how 50,000 Bulgarian Jews–including Comforty’s parents and grandparents–were saved from the Nazi death camps by a coalition of protesters that included the Bulgarian Orthodox church, labor unions, members of parliament, and countless ordinary non-Jewish citizens. Comforty, an Evanston resident, spent 12 years working on the film and raised most of its budget–over a million dollars–himself.
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Cowritten by Comforty’s wife, Lisa, and based on interviews with more than 100 people and thousands of photos that belonged to his grandparents and others, The Optimists was shown as a work in progress in March 2000 at the Chicago Historical Society and premiered in its finished form four months later at the Jerusalem International Film Festival, where it won first prize in the category “Documenting the Jewish Experience.”
Now that there’s a negative, Comforty wants to get the film into theaters in New York and Los Angeles early next year. “We do not have many successful stories of people resisting a government,” he says. “The story can inspire people from different communities trying to build bridges and not stereotype other minorities.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jacky and Lisa Comforty.
