Pizza in Auschwitz

Director: Moshe Zimerman
Israel 2008 52 mins
Language: Hebrew with English subtitles

Septuagenarian Dani drags his reluctant, grown-up children - chainsmoking daughter Miri and mild mannered, religious son Sagi - from Israel to Poland to bring them face to face with the camps that defined his life. As they progress on their tour of the darkest places in his past, emotions boil over in a rollercoaster of tension, tears and laughter. Full of joie de vivre and irreverent black humour, Dani has an unthinkable plan for the climax to the family road trip: to spend the night inside Auschwitz itself.

With its larger than life central character, Pizza in Auschwitz is a Holocaust documentary with a difference. Dani’s defiant attitude and almost obsessive need to introduce his children to his demons – against their will – speaks more deeply about the trauma of both first and second generation survivors.An intimate, deftly observed portrait of a close-knit family trying to cast off their shadows.DB

Screening with

Diary of Niclas Gheiler

Dir. George Aguilar | USA | 2007 | 35 mins | Polish with English subtitles

Filmmaker and visual artist George Aguilar mixes archival photographs and found footage with haunting words to create a stirring poetic reverie on his grandfather’s life - from World War One Germany, where he served alongside a young Adolf Hitler, to the rise of Nazism and the run up to World War Two. A highly original and deeply personal take on a crucial period in Europe’s history.