Syndrome K

Syndrome K (2019) was co-written and directed by Stephen Edwards.

It's a documentary about an amazing group of young doctors who set out to save some of Italy's Jews from capture and murder by the Germans.

The physicians invented a deadly disease--Syndrome K. It was said to be highly contagious and almost always lethal. There wasn't any Syndrome K. The "patients" were Jews who were saved from the Germans for a few days until they could be placed in convents and other locations where they were relatively safe. (Many Romans--clergy and non-clergy--bravely helped the Jews.)

The story itself is amazing. Unfortunately, the movie isn't well constructed. About 1/3 is interviews with the doctors or their relatives. That's great. About 1/3 is recreations--OK. About 1/3 is more or less random WWII stock footage--not great. I think the producers wanted a full-length documentary. They didn't want a 55-minute documentary, so they had to lengthen the film by filling it out with something. They could have tracked down the Syndrome K "patients," or relatives of the people that were saved, but that would have been expensive, and they didn't go in that direction.

This movie has an excellent IMDb rating of 7.8 (with very few raters, however.) I didn't think that it was quite that good, and rated it 7. We saw this film as part of the wonderful Rochester Jewish Film Festival.