Nina's Journey

Ninas Resa
Director: Lena Einhorn
Sweden 2005 119mins
Language: Polish and Swedish with English subtitles

The film is based on the real-life story of writer-director Lena Einhorn’s mother, Nina Rajmic, who lived in Warsaw. When war broke out and the Nazis invaded, the family was moved to an apartment in the ghetto. Although their parents died, Nina and her brother Rudolf survived the war. Gripping interviews are interspersed with dramatised segments showing her life as a young girl as she and her family traveled to the USA and back to Poland, moving from Lodz to the Warsaw ghetto, and surviving the uprising. After the war Nina realised her dream to study medicine and went to Copenhagen on a research fellowship.The archival footage, from newsreels to still photographs, provides historical background and depth to Nina’s story. Starring some of Poland’s top actors Nina’s Journey breaks with most of the conventional styles of cinematic storytelling. This is a feature film with a real storyteller, Nina herself, who died in May 2002. “I have had an exceptionally happy life” was her personal assessment.