Margot Josefsohn and Ed Asner in the new film “Tiger Within.” Photo: Menemsha Films

The late Emmy Award-winning Jewish actor Ed Asner plays a widowed Holocaust survivor who befriends a homeless, teenage sex worker in the new film Tiger Within, which was released on Friday.

Asner died in August 2021 at the age of 91. Tiger Within is his last major performance before his passing.

The drama, from Menemsha Films, shows Asner’s character, named Samuel, showing compassion, kindness and a sense of family to his new friend Casey, played by 14-year-old newcomer Margot Josefsohn. Together they explore the topics of fear, forgiveness, healing and world peace. The film is directed by Rafal Zielinksi and written by Gina Wendkos, screenwriter of The Princess Diaries and Coyote Ugly. Michael Pina served as producer with Mark Tschanz as composer and Helge Gerull as director of photography.

“With all of the harshness and hardness that he has suffered during his life, he still has enough wonderful embers in his heart to see something good about this girl, to extend himself, and to save her,” Asner said in an interview about his character in Tiger Within before his passing. He further explained that the film “encourages human-to-human relationships, warmth, love [and] responsibility.”

Zielinksi, who directed several award-winning independent films, said Asner’s character “overcomes hate for this girl and shows her unconditional love. It’s the greatest gift anyone can receive on this earth and he keeps his promise he once made to his wife – ‘to forgive all before he dies.'”

Asner was a television legend who garnered 20 Emmy nominations and seven wins throughout his career. Tiger Within was his last full-length feature film but months before he died he also recorded his voice for Carl’s Date, a Disney and Pixar short that is a follow-up to the 2009 Oscar-winning animated movie Up from Pixar Animation Studios. He played widower Carl Fredricksen and the trailer for Carl’s Date was released in June.

Zielinksi researched forgiveness by speaking with numerous scholars, experts and religious leaders before filming Tiger Within. He also asked hundreds of people on the streets of New York and Los Angeles what forgiveness means to them, as well as high schools students at schools, and the interviews and videos are available for viewing on the film’s website.

A study released in 2020 revealed that almost two-thirds of young American adults were unaware that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believed Jews were the cause of the Holocaust. A separate study released in 2022 showed that nearly 33 percent of students in elementary and high schools in the United States and Canada were unsure if the Holocaust happened and if it did, they thought it was “exaggerated or fabricated.”

Tiger Within is available in select theaters nationwide and on-demand online. Watch the film’s trailer below.