The Dybbuk. A Report on the Banality of the Earth

Director and producer: Krzysztof Kopczynski

Rebbe Nachman, the holy leader of the Breslov Hasidim movement, was born four years after 1768, the year that a large peasant rebellion led by the Cossacks Gonta and Zalizniak, slaughtered 20 000 Uman residents; both Jews and Poles.
Today, every year, thousands of Hasidim from 70 countries visit Rebbe Nachman’s grave in Uman, Ukraine. The crowds of Hasidim support a large part of the city’s economy, although not everybody in the city is happy with that. Ukrainian nationalists agitate against the foreigners and accuse the local authorities of selling out to Hasidim. A large Christian cross is erected by the lake where the largest group of Hasidim come to pray every year.