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Steal a Pencil for Me
Seventh Art Releasing

Steal a Pencil for Me reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 69 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
10.0 out of 10
based on 12 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 1 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Jeroen Krabbé, Jack Polak, Ina Soep, and Ellen Ten Damme

It's 1943, and Holland is under Nazi occupation. At a birthday party in Amsterdam, Jack, an unassuming accountant, meets Ina, a 20-year-old beauty from a wealthy family who instantly steals his heart. But Jack's pursuit of love will be complicated; he is poor and married to Manja, a flirtatious and mercurial spouse. When the Jews are being deported, husband, wife, and lover find themselves at the same concentration camp, living in the same barracks. When Jack's wife objects to the "girlfriend" in spite of their unhappy marriage, Jack and Ina resort to writing secret love letters, which sustain them throughout the horrible circumstances of the war. Steal a Pencil for Me is a compelling documentary feature film by Academy Award nominee Michele Ohayon about the power of love and the ability of humankind to rise above unimaginable suffering. (Seventh Art Releasing)


GENRE(S): Romance  
WRITTEN BY: Michèle Ohayon  
DIRECTED BY: Michèle Ohayon  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: November 9, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 
LANGUAGE(S): English / Dutch 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
San Francisco Chronicle Leba Hertz
A terrific documentary about forbidden love in the most heinous of places.
Read Full Review
88
TV Guide Ken Fox
Amazingly, many of Jack's and Ina's letters survived and -- read aloud by Dutch actors Jeroen Krabbe and Ellen Ten Damme -- serve as the thematic thread that runs through Ohayon's film.
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83
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Gentle study in human resilience and luck.
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80
Film Threat Zack Haddad
If you enjoy learning about the Holocaust and how dark a time it was, or you just like a good love story, then check this documentary out.
Read Full Review
75
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
If Michele Ohayon's absorbing documentary didn't provide the proof, you'd never believe the story she tells about Holocaust survivors Jack Polak and Ina Soep.
Read Full Review
70
Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Tells this most unusual love story with grace and compassion.
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70
Village Voice Ella Taylor
At once tender and tough-minded, Steal a Pencil for Me offers a useful corrective to the sentimental prevailing notion that the Shoah only happened to saints.
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70
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
There have been dozens of Holocaust documentaries, and one could well argue that the world doesn't need another. But Michèle Ohayon's Steal a Pencil for Me offers a simple human story of dignity, levity and romance.
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70
The New York Times Matt Zoller Seitz
What makes Ms. Ohayon’s movie special is its recognition that epic horrors don’t erase private dramas.
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67
The Onion (A.V. Club) Staff (Not credited)
There's incredible feeling behind Steal A Pencil For Me--enough to sustain two lives throughout unimaginable hardship--but the film doesn't bring much of it to the surface.
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60
Variety Joe Leydon
Fortunately, helmer Michele Ohayon ("Cowboy del Amor") treats her tricky subject matter with sufficient sensitivity to keep doc from ever seeming offensively flip or overly sentimental.
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30
Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Although their love is undeniably a blessing, I was disconcerted watching the elderly couple smile and chuckle today as they recall their daily letters and secret meetings in the midst of such wide-scale death.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 10.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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