Maine Jewish Film Festival: The Stamp Thief

Directed by Dan Sturman. 100 minutes. Not Rated. In English. Part detective story, part heist film, part untold history, “The Stamp Thief” investigates a tale dating back to the Holocaust: that a mysterious Nazi stole priceless stamp collections from concentration camp victims and buried the stolen stamps in a small town in Poland. Embarking on a real-life “Argo”-like adventure, one-time “Seinfeld” producer Gary Gilbert sets out to confirm the story and recover the stamps. His tactic: a fake movie shoot. His goal: to return the stamps to their rightful owners, hopefully delivering a small measure of justice more than 70 years after the Holocaust. Gary is an improbable hero, a mensch who won’t take no for an answer. As he begins to peel back layers of Nazi family secrets, he discovers that the assumptions American Jews make about present-day Poland – and those that some Poles make about American Jews – complicate his plan in ways he never imagined.