Twelve-year-old Leah Tutman hung on her father’s shoulder as he stared at an image of Anne Frank on the computer screen.
“Dad,” she asked, “why is my picture on the computer?”
They looked at each other, then back at the screen. The resemblance was uncanny.
“It was pretty interesting,” Leah, now 17, recalled. “It’s better than looking like any other celebrity. In fact, it’s an honor.”
Leah portrays Anne Frank in “Heart and Mind,” a 90-minute film of fictional scenes and documentary-style moments she created with her brother, Avi, and their parents, Adam and Miryam Tutman, members of Temple Beth El in Aptos.
The plot relies on entries penned in Anne’s famous diary to answer questions about relevant issues, such as anti-Semitism and war.
“We looked at what she wrote about peace, love and goodness,” Leah said. “And how amidst all the chaos and her friends being taken to concentration camps, she still believed everything would be OK in the end.”
What started as the Tutmans’ collaborative tribute to mark Anne Frank’s 80th birthday transformed into an on-camera journey that took them all over Europe and back to Santa Cruz, where they live and filmed some of the final scenes.
Their trip was made possible with financial support from the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and the Holocaust Center of Northern California. Community Television of Santa Cruz County lent equipment as needed.
After a private screening at their home later this month, the Tutmans plan to shop their film to synagogues and Jewish agencies across the country.
“To be sponsored is every playwright’s dream,” said Avi Tutman, 18. “People are ready for something like this — to see young people exploring some profound questions, sharing insights and remembering the past. We’ll take this as far as we can.”
When Leah was 14, she auditioned for the lead role in the San Jose Stage Company’s production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” As the nervous teen walked on stage, she could hear people whispering about her similarities to Anne Frank.
“I think that’s when I started realizing how much I connected to her,” Leah said. “Everything Anne wrote in her diary could have come from somewhere in me. In a way, we are similar people.”
A finalist for the lead, Leah learned that she’d have to kiss a 20-year-old man on stage. She refused, and it cost her the role. She was crushed, but the experience gave her family an idea: They would create their own production based on Anne Frank.
Last August, the Tutmans traveled to Amsterdam to film several scenes for “Heart and Mind.” With cameras in tow, the group gained access to Anne Frank’s former apartment. They walked the rooms, with Leah pointing out where Anne wrote her diary, the window she stared through and more.
“My heart just stopped when I stood in that room where Anne Frank grew up,” Leah said. “It was remarkable.”
With Avi’s script in hand, the family visited Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where Anne and her sister, Margot, died.
It was there that Leah and Avi interviewed Hannah Goslar Pick, a childhood friend of Anne’s who reunited with the sisters in Bergen-Belsen and tossed food to them over the camp’s fences. During a stop in London, Leah and Avi also spoke with Eva Schloss, whose mother married Anne’s father, Otto, after the war.
“Anne Frank had a line about her struggle for heart and mind,” Avi said. “We wanted to carry on this idea where we could almost talk to Anne Frank and have her answer questions that penetrate time.
“What does it mean to be Jewish? How do we stop hatred? Does history repeat itself? These are questions my sister and I face.”