The Optimists

Director Jacky Comforty explores the story of 8,500 Bulgarian Jews who, in 1943, were rounded up to await deportation to a concentration camp before being suddenly sent home. Comforty, whose own family was among these 8,500, uses thousands of World War II-era photographs and interviews with survivors to examine how the majority of Bulgaria's Jewish population of 50,000 managed to live through the Holocaust, and how national protests saved those bound for execution.