In 1939, at the age of three, Edith fled Nazi Germany with her parents. Now she lives in São Paulo. Her five children have sought happiness abroad, even though two of them have meanwhile returned to their homeland. The other three will probably continue to live abroad. One of them, the film maker Andréa Seligmann Silva who lives in Amsterdam, investigates in the documentary Separations why she and her brothers and her sister left their home country. She brings the five together in their parental home in São Paulo and interviews her relatives, using as starting point an episode of psychosis her mother had five years ago. This provides an autobiographical film with intimate, confrontational stories that bring back old traumas in the Jewish family.
Seligmann Silva made the film together with the literature theorist and art historian Mieke Bal, who is also active as video artist and has made short experimental documentaries about migration.
- Directors
- Andréa Seligmann Silva, Mieke Bal
- Premiere
- World premiere
- Country of production
- Netherlands
- Year
- 2010
- Festival Edition
- IFFR 2010
- Length
- 83'
- Medium
- Betacam Digi PAL
- Languages
- Portuguese, English, Dutch
- Producer
- Andréa Seligmann Silva
- Sales
- Andréa Seligmann Silva
- Screenplay
- Mieke Bal, Andréa Seligmann Silva
- Cinematography
- Andréa Seligmann Silva
- Editor
- Mieke Bal, Andréa Seligmann Silva
- Sound Design
- Marco Vermaas
- Music
- Wim Conradi
- Website
- http://www.miekebal.org/artworks/films/separations/