Shadows

Description

Accolades
Best Mid-Length Documentary Award
Israeli Documentary Forum

Official Selection
FIPA, Biarritz, France
Art House Cinema Filmtheater Kriterion, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival, Denmark
Vienna Jewish Film Festival, Austria

Synopsis

The stories of Eitan, Yigal, and Miri show how long the past can cast its shadows. Their Holocaust-surviving parents were abused by the Nazis, then became abusers themselves—their fear and grief transformed into aggression and anger towards their children. For the first time on-screen, children of Holocaust survivors talk openly about the mental and physical suffering they experienced. Stories of abuse contrast with cheerful-looking black-and-white photos of the families. Even the grandchildren appear to be suffering from their parents’ burden of sorrow and pain. The children’s attempts to talk about the past, as with Eitan and his ailing mother and Miri with her son, seem futile. The palpable inability to make contact is almost unbearable. The film asks the unavoidable question: how long will the Holocaust continue to exert its evil influence on future generations, and how can the demons of the past be exorcised?

Director

Noa Aharoni graduated with a degree in TV and Cinema from Sapir College in 1994. In her documentary movie “Shadows” about the abuse among the second generation of the Holocaust by their survivor parents, was selected for the prestigious Docaviv Film Festival and IDFA.