Intimate Stranger
This documentary is about the efforts of the family of an eccentric patriarch to understand more about this largely absent man. He was also the documentarian's maternal grandfather. A Palestinian Jew, Joseph Casuoto was a trader fluent in seven languages and generous with his advice. He lived the better part of his life each year in Japan and left his family behind in Brooklyn, dying some years after the end of World War II. To this day, there are so many mysteries about him that the only thing family members could agree about was that he was far kinder to those he did business with than to them. This hour-long documentary is not to be confused with the 1991 thriller with the same name directed by Allan Holzman.
Director: Alan Berliner