Left Luggage

Based on the book by Carl Friedman "The Shovel and the Loom", this film takes place in Antwerp, 1972, and tells of Chaja Silberschmidt, a 20-years old student who grew up in the shadow of her parents' pasts, both survived Auschwitz. Mr. Silberschmidt has become obsessed with finding the 2 suitcases full of personal effects he buried somewhere in Antwerp shortly before he was deported; for him, they've come to embody the past and everything he's lost. Mrs. Silberschmidt, meanwhile, has little patience for her husband's memories and would like to forget the Holocaust ever happened. And for her part, Chaja doesn't want to hear any of it or of “this whole Jewish thing." Chaja's inevitable change of heart comes after a family friend gets her a job as a nanny for the Kalmans, a conservative Hassidic family headed by fearsome patriarch and his dutiful wife.