What it’s about
Ten years in the making, and culled from over 200 hours of footage, Solnicki’s intimate, fascinating family portrait speaks quiet volumes about the legacy of historical tragedy and the lingering memory of personal trauma. Blending in 8mm footage of his youthful parents and joyful scenes from a long ago Bar Mitzvah, the film explores themes of survival and perseverance, and the family’s tragic heritage remains close to the surface.
Why we love it
Filmmaker Solnicki documents four generations of his family living in Buenos Aires. Grandmother Pola survived the concentration camps in Poland but lost all of her relatives. Father Victor was born in Czechoslovakia at the end of the war and immigrated to Argentina with his parents, only to lose his father to suicide. Victor is a forceful presence: mercurial husband to wife Mirta and adoring grandpa to little Mateo. He is the charismatic center around which the rest of the family revolves. Yet he too has his demons.