SILVER SPRING, Md. -- A short film by a Silver Spring teen with a rare disease will be featured at the Cannes International Film Festival this month, and thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the prodigious filmmaker and her family are going to France for the occasion, the Gazette reported.
Michele Pinczuk's four-minute film "L'Chaim Israel" celebrates the 60th anniversary of Israel through interviews with local Holocaust survivors, including the 15-year-old filmmaker's grandfather.
Pinczuk has a gastrointestinal disease related to allergy-fighting white blood cells, the Gazette reported. Her family got in touch with Make-A-Wish about the film in 2008. The foundation is footing the bill for the family's trip to France and Monte Carlo.
The film won a new filmmaker's award at the 2009 Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival and the student film contest at the 2008 D.C. Jewish Film Festival, the Gazette reported.
She's already filmed most of her second documentary, "Freedom," about teenage points of view on the meaning of the word.
