The Secret

AWARDS

GOLDEN WAVE AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY Bordeaux International Festival of Women in Cinema

SELECTED FILM FESTIVALS & SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Berlin International Film Festival
Jerusalem International Film Festival
New York Jewish Film Festival
Boston Jewish Film Festival
Portland Jewish Film Festival
Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival
Australia Jewish Film Festival
UK Jewish Film Festival
Toronto Jewish Film Festival
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival
UN Headquarters, Geneva
Israeli Film Festivals NY, Miami & Chicago

The Secret explores the phenomenon of Catholic Polish citizens who discover that their parents have kept their true identity from them: they are actually Jewish. With their Jewishness repressed and repudiated for decades by their parents, the children grow up under Communist rule knowing nothing of their heritage. Through accidental discovery or deathbed confessions their true identity is revealed. Often, this unsettling news comes as a result of a family crisis or life-cycle event, heightening the familial and personal drama experienced by these “new Jews" who find even their most intimate relationships tested. What does this new truth mean to them, as Poles and as Jews. Officials estimate an astounding 20,000 cases in Poland alone.

Director Ronit Kerstner profiles some of these men and women, including a group who have founded an organization to learn about Judaism. Kerstner also interviews Romuald Jakub Weksler-Waszkinel, a Catholic priest who, at age 35, learned from his mother that his biological mother had been a Jewish woman from the ghetto in Stare Swieciany near Vilna. Many of these new-found Jews have become estranged from their disapproving families after making the decision to practice Jewish customs and rituals. These personal stories unfold in the context of Polish-Jewish history and as a direct legacy of the Holocaust.

The Secret is, more broadly, an exploration of identity and family, issues often confounding for adopted children. As Kerstner has explained “This isn’t only a film about Jews in Poland. This is my own auto-therapy. My brother-in-law, who often travels with groups of Jews from Israel to Auschwitz, told me about Poles discovering their Jewish roots. This happened at a time, after the death of my father, that I discovered that my parents were not my parents – that I had been adopted. When I finally found my biological mother in Paris, and learned that she came from Warsaw, I knew I had to make this film.”

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

“It’s not often one sees visitors crying at Geneva’s Palace of Nations. These guests had been moved to tears by the stories of Polish citizens discovering their Jewish roots, stories, which in many cases, had been deeply buried family secrets. The film’s strength lies in its depiction of people searching for the answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ Their doubts surface unpredictably; just before her death a grandmother reveals to her granddaugther that she is not her real grandmother; a hazy memory of a father’s lullabies suddenly reminded one of the film subjects of Jewish melodies.”
- Tomasz Surdel, Gazeta Wyborcza (Leading Polish Daily Newspaper)

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Classroom/Institutional Use Only DVD

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