The film was funded as part of the festival year "1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany" and will be shown at an event at the Goethe Institute in Melbourne on 5 May, where you can also discuss with the filmmaker afterwards.
With her film, Ella Dreyfus explores her German-Jewish family history. Also through the inclusion of her visual art objects, in which she unmistakably draws attention to the Jewish past in Germany, she wants to establish a new connection to the homeland of her ancestors and, as she says herself, "bring the names of our families and our Jewish affiliation back to Germany, to reclaim our rightful territory in the place where it was destroyed." In interviews with her uncle George Dreyfus and her cousin Jonathan, we learn a lot about the family history and the different attitudes of the family members towards Germany and their different ways of dealing with the traumatic past. The film also aims to initiate a new dialogue for subsequent generations, encouraging them to consciously deal with inherited traumas.
Die Dreyfus Familie etwa 1940 Source: Ella Dreyfus
George Dreyfus composed the music for the film and Jonathan Dreyfus realised it with Amy Anderson and Tori Newberry in the soundtrack, from which we also hear some short excerpts.
