In Search of Happiness

In Search of Happiness is a 2005 Russian documentary film that poetically follows the lives of Boris and Masha Rak, Soviet Jews who in 1934 moved to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO) created by the order of Joseph Stalin in Russian Far East. The film won the Best Documentary award in the Russian Film Festival in 2006. The Jewish population of the JAO never reached 30% and as of 2003 it was only about 1.2%. The population of the capital, Birobidzan, has dwindled, The city's only Birobidzhan Synagogue holds services twice a week. The film shows Boris's and Masha's modest life, without modern technology, relying on each other's hard work to survive. Rak is the chairman of Birobidzhan's last collective farm, which excessive rain has...