Because Cinequest is underway, my video pick is from the 2015 festival: in the documentary Meet the Hitlers, we are introduced to those few people who choose NOT to change their birth name of “Hitler”. And it’s a varied bunch. We meet a delightfully confident Missouri teen girl, a workaday Ecuadorian whose parents didn’t know who Hitler was and an affable Utah oldster who might be the most jovial fellow ever to brighten up a chain restaurant. And there’s an Austrian odd duck burdened with enough personal baggage that he surely didn’t need this name. Do they see the name as a curse, and how has it affected them? It’s a theoretical question to us in the audience, but it’s compelling to see the real world responses of the film’s subjects.
And then there’s a mystery about three Americans who HAVE changed the name – because they are the last living relatives of Adolph Hitler. We follow the journalist who has been tracking them down for over a decade. (Documentarian Matt Ogens makes a great editorial choice as to whether to reveal their current names.)
Finally, there’s the disturbing saga of a New Jersey neo-Nazi who is NOT named Adolph Hitler but WANTS to be. Of course, anybody can choose to adorn themselves with a Hitler mustache and swastika tattoos and spew hatespeech, but his choices are affecting not just himself, but his children.
Some of these threads are light-hearted and some are very dark. Meet the Hitlers works so well because Ogens weaves them together so seamlessly. It’s a very successful documentary.
I first reviewed Meet the Hitlers for its premiere at Cinequest 2015. Now Meet the Hitlers is available for streaming rental from Amazon Video and Vudu and for streaming purchase from iTunes.