Quezon's Game (2019)

Interesting facts

Quezon's Game is a 2018 Philippine biographical drama film directed by Matthew Rosen. The film centers on Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon and his plan to shelter German and Austrian Jews in the Philippines who were fleeing Nazi Germany during the pre-World War II era.

Production

Quezon's Game is a joint venture production of Star Cinema, iWant, and Kinetek. The film, which had a production budget of US$500,000, was directed by British-Jewish filmmaker Matthew Rosen. Production was finished by October 15, 2018. Rosen spent three months on casting for the film alone.

Lorena and Matthew Rosen were responsible for the film's original story idea while Janice Y. Perez and Dean Rosen wrote the screenplay. The film was produced to tell a relatively unknown account of President Manuel L. Quezon rescuing Jewish refugees from the Holocaust and temporarily providing them shelter in the Philippines.

Matthew Rosen, a British-born Jewish immigrant who moved to the Philippines in the 1980s, became aware of President Quezon's plan after he learned that his Filipino wife and local children in Manila knew the lyrics to the Jewish folk song "Hava Nagila", while not being aware of its Jewish origin. Rosen started inquiring at a synagogue and its museum in Manila in 2009 where he learned about President Quezon's plan for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

Rosen wanted the film to be distinct from Schindler's List, as he described the film to as "about the horrors that man can do" and wanted Quezon's Game to emphasize optimism amidst a "time of darkness". However, he was advised by the producers to feature Quezon's Game "the Philippines' Schindler's List".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.