Storyville

The dramatic tale of a woman whose Holocaust memoir took the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher – who turned detective – revealed an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth. In the early 1990s, Misha Defonseca began to tell friends in the Jewish community of Massachusetts of her terrible experiences as a young girl during the Holocaust. Stripped of her identity, and ‘hidden' in the house of a Catholic family, she decided to run away, walking east across Europe, eating earthworms and insects, befriending wolves, evading the Nazis and living by her wits in search her deported parents.

On hearing this incredible account, local publisher Jane Daniel persuaded Misha to write her story as a memoir. Before the book was even written, the buzz began. The press picked up the story, and film and translation rights were being sold around the world. By the time the book was finished, Oprah's Book Club came calling, and their involvement guaranteed an international bestseller.

Then something strange happened. Misha grew uncooperative and refused to go on the live TV show. Thus began a three-year feud between Misha and her publisher that ended in court, accused of stealing the copyright and withholding royalties. The publisher was ordered to pay damages of USD22 million. In an effort to rebuild her reputation, Jane Daniel delved deeper into Misha's story. A cinematic documentary about truth and lies, about history and imagination and how and why we believe the stories we're told.