DIE LEBENDEN

Sita Popescu (Anna Fischer) is 25, a Romanian-Austrian student in Berlin who earns her living at a television station. After her grandfather Gerhard’s (Hanns Schuschnig) 95th birthday in Vienna, she finds a photograph showing him in an SS uniform. The family has never spoken about it. Sita begins to ask questions and search, with the help of her uncle Michael, from whom the family has cut ties, and comes across documents proving that her grandfather was a guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp. “Die Lebenden” by Barbara Albert, Austria 2012, takes its protagonist from Vienna to Warsaw, to Transylvania and back to Berlin.

Albert is working through her own history: she too is the granddaughter of an SS man who stood guard at Auschwitz. The film, a co-production between Austria, Germany and Poland, is less an act of historical reckoning than a portrait of the third generation, caught between affection and knowledge, having to decide how to deal with the living. The world premiere took place in competition at the San Sebastián festival in September 2012. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2012.

Shown at the 2012 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2012 · Film Archive