Lies My Father Told Me (1975)

Lies My Father Told Me is a 1975 Canadian film made in Montreal, Quebec. It was directed by Ján Kadár and stars Jeffrey Lynas as an orthodox Jewish boy growing up in 1920s Montreal. The film received the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1975.

The original story was written by Ted Allan in 1949. Allan, a Jew from East End Montreal, was working at an advertising agency. David Rome, editor of the Canadian Jewish Congress Bulletin, asked him to write a story immediately. Allan thought up a story and had it in Rome's hands within hours. It eventually became this Academy Award-nominated film and a novella.

Synopsis

The story tells of a six-year-old boy who would travel with his grandfather on an old horse-drawn cart through the alleyways in a Jewish ghetto of Montreal in the 1920s. The two would call out to residents asking to collect their old junk (a rag-and-bone man). The boy's grandfather was religious but his father was not. Eventually the grandfather dies, as does his horse Ferdeleh, leaving the boy feeling bitter toward his secular father.

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