Director Matthew Mishory and producer and financier Bradford L. Schlei announced the start of production for Rubber Ring Films’ and Schlei’s Stone Canyon Entertainment’s “Finding Fioretta,” which will start early next year.
The feature documentary chronicles the life of genealogist Randol Schoenberg who is on a quest to find the centuries-old gravestone of his oldest known ancestor — a woman who died in the 1600s in the Jewish ghetto of Venice, Italy. In 2005, Schoenberg successfully sued the Austrian government on behalf of Holocaust survivor Maria Altmann, recovering the five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis. That case inspired the movie “Woman in Gold” starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren.
Mishory spoke about the project, saying, “America’s obsession with genealogy is really an obsession with storytelling.” He added, “Randy has made it his life’s work to tell a 500-year story about his family, and that story is really the story of the Jews in Europe. This documentary film will explores themes that have always fascinated me: hidden histories, identity and creative inspiration.”
Schoenberg added, “I’m glad to be taking this journey with Matthew and to use the format of a 500-year genealogical search to explore the questions of identity and how the past is preserved and transmitted into the future.”
Mishory and Rob Levine serve as co-writers, along with Schlei, Álvaro Fernández serving as producers. Levine and Schoenberg serve as executive producers.
Filming is expected to get underway in the first quarter of 2022 in Vienna, Prague, Venice and across Europe, as well as Los Angeles.