Atlanta Jewish Film Festival – Kichka: Telling Myself

A pioneering cartoonist confronts the weight of his father’s Holocaust survival as he comes to terms with how inherited trauma shaped his life and art. Acclaimed French-Belgian Israeli illustrator and graphic novelist Michel Kichka—long considered one of Israel’s leading cultural voices—turns inward after a storied career, to examine the lingering shadows that marked his childhood as a survivor’s son. As he revisits the burden carried by the second generation, his razor-sharp political satire charts the erosion of shared values across Israeli society, from early Zionist optimism to the ruptures of October 7. Blending candid reflections with archival materials and expressive animation, this highly personal self-portrait traces an artist whose work continues to challenge, illuminate, and bear witness.