Lost in Berlin

Lost in Berlin starts in Minneapolis where Rod Martel, the filmmaker, cares for his endearing, funny, 100-year-old mother, Gerda. She has late-stage dementia and her long-term memory is almost non-existent. Rod pieces together her backstory, beginning in Berlin through the social cultural constructs of Hitler's rise, his own research, and scattered chats with Gerda. Martel's grandfather is Karl Freund, an Oscar winning Hollywood cinematographer. Suzette Freund, his grandmother, is forced into Ravensbruck concentration camp. Martel effortlessly excavates several themes from the fracturing effects of the Holocaust and family trauma. It is an homage and a declaration of life. Martel also touches on other subjects underexplored in holocaust film. Homosexuality during the War and the blurring of German/Jewish identity. His cinematography is an incredible and generous work of art through nostalgic and absorbing film footage, music, and photos. It is a brave reveal for the sake of wholeness, identity, and security. An insightful filmmaker, gifted cinematographer, with a painful, tender, and personal story.

I watched this film twice, with a month in between viewings. I also had the pleasure of speaking with Rod Martel, and learning about the challenges of making such a film for a first-time filmmaker.

The interwoven venues and people in the film were very well integrated and when all is said and done you have a beautiful tribute to Rod's mother, an explanation of what she lost from her seemingly idyllic childhood and early years in Berlin, a visual and touching demonstration of the way that dementia steals our memory, and a perspective and background on a number of family members.

The pictures and other references to the Holocaust were also interwoven with the other aspects of the film, and all were narrated very well by Mr. Martel.

A very moving film, which makes us relive a lost past with intensity and love. The alternation between the present and this disappeared past always transports us between drama and hope for the future. This film gave me the feeling of reconnecting with my family who had disappeared from Germany in tragic circumstances which were particularly well conveyed in this film.

We feel the love of a son for his mother and this quest to reconstruct a story that has not been told, no doubt because of the suffering that these memories evoked.

I saw it a second time with even more emotion than during my first viewing and I left with an indescribable emotion. Congratulation Rod!

From the start Lost in Berlin takes you on a visual ride throughout life and history. An aging Gerda submits to the slowly fading memories blurred within dementia as her son, Rod, attempts to pluck them out of an almost lost abyss. Poetic narrated words of a vulnerable son carry this historical and unbelievable twisting turning family story shaped by the Holocaust.

The mix of words, visuals, history, and complexity come together to express the gripping emotions throughout the story. I found myself eager to know more, to learn more, to see more. The filmmaker brings his life into the viewer, captivating them til the end. Even though the story is his own, I found so many parallels within my life making this film a must see.

"Lost in Berlin" is a thoughtful and moving tribute to Rod Martel's mother (Gerda), grandmother (Susette), and his family's experiences. There is a lot of shared experience among those whose families went through the Holocaust. I have always felt that it is important to tell all of their stories, given that (as we can see from what is going on in the world today), our collective memories can be rather short and (unfortunately) people do not always learn from the past. As such, there is always the need to be reminded of what can happen. I also feel that there is even more of an urgency to document and recount these stories, given that the population of Holocaust survivors is aging, and therefore there are fewer and fewer who are able to provide a firsthand account of the atrocities that took place during World War II, and the ways in which their lives (and their families' lives) were forever altered by those events.