Festivals/Awards:
Tribeca Film Festival 2016
Director's Bio-Filmography:
JOSEPH MARTIN este cel mai tânăr regizor de documentar din istoria Channel 4 distins cu Broadcast Hotshot Award, după ce postul britanic de televiziune Channel4 i-a comisionat realizarea documentarului WIN A BABY, de cum a ieșit de pe băncile școlii de film. Următorul său film, SCIENTOLOGISTS AT WAR, a avut premiera la Sheffield DocFest in 2013 și i-a adus nominalizarea pe lista scurtă pentru Breakthrough Brits Award de către BAFTA.
SAM BLAIR este absolvent al National Film and Television School. Lungmetrajul său de ficțiune, PERSONAL BEST (2012), a fost sprijinit de British Film Institute și a rulat în sălile de cinema din UK. În 2014 a regizat documentarul MARADONA ’86, selecționat în premieră la Tribeca Film Festival.
Director's / Curator's Statement:
„My hope was to create a cinematic and personable film. I felt the danger was that we could create a didactic piece detailing the rise and causes of anti Semitism in Europe that could leave audiences cold. I instead wanted to explore these themes on a more human level. Narrowing the focus to the impact on one family. One of the ways I achieved this approach was to eschew any kind of omnipotent voiceover or narration and instead employ interviews and actuality as the basis of the story telling. I wanted the film to have a subjective feel and I chose the train yard as the location of the interviews instead of the common photographers backdrop. This old communist train yard in a state of ruin has an otherworldly feel to it, symbolically placing Csanad in a state of transition with its journey iconography littered throughout and also hinting at the inevitable task of having to retrace his family’s footsteps on the infamous train to Auschwitz before he can hope to make any kinds of amends. In many ways the story starts and ends there. I think Csanad’s story is almost mythical in its scope and scale and archetypes. It’s a kind of cautionary tale that could be told to children for generations to come and the aesthetic of the film needed to reflect this. The way we set about achieving that was to track down some Leica Summilux lenses from the 60’s. They’ve been out of production for over a decade but have a softness, a warmer reading of natural light that is far more romanticised compared to technologically superior, but more clinical modern lenses. We also at times used lenses with uncoated elements, this lowers the contrast level and sharpness and allows the light to bleed more in to the image lending the film an ethereal look. I remember early on I was discussing the film with two of the producers, Alex Holder and Danielle Clark and we were arranging to have a research meeting with a Hungarian holocaust survivor. Alex remarked that it was nearly 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz and that the only survivors that were left would be those who had been children at the time. This would be one of the last films to document the experiences of a survivor. It was a huge honour but also a great pressure to know that we were making what would be one of the last attempts to document first hand testimonial about this unique tragedy. When you think about it, it’s a great burden to bear. I hope we did them justice.“ (Joseph Martin)