Joe's Violin

Joe Feingold was born in Poland in 1923, into a family where everyone played an instrument and music was very important. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he spent more than six years in a labor camp in Siberia. He survived the war and then, just before immigrating to the United States in 1947, he found a violin at a flea market and took the instrument along on his journey. Now, almost 70 years later, he can no longer play due to ill health, so he decides to donate his violin to an organization that distributes old instruments to children in destitute neighborhoods. In the scenes, interviews and archive footage that follow, we watch as the life stories of Joe and 12-year-old Brianna become intertwined. She is selected as the recipient of this instrument with such a charged history. Then Brianna and Joseph meet for the first time, the beginning of a truly remarkable friendship.