Choice and Destiny

Director: Tsipi Reibenbach
ISRAEL / 1993 / Color / 16mm / 118 min

The filmmaker’s father, Yitshak (80 years old), and mother, Fruma (72), are Holocaust survivors living in Israel. This film portrays their lives in retirement burdened by the shadows of memory. Unlike Yitshak, who talks of his survival in the death camps, Fruma refuses to talk until, under the film’s influence, she breaks 50 years of silence at the end to speak of her own family’s humiliation. This moving story is told through the small gestures of the daily routine of the couple’s lives preparing food and eating with their grandchildren.