Thomas Harlan, filmmaker, author and revolutionary was born in 1929 in Germany. His father was the infamous propaganda filmmaker Veit Harlan, director of Jew Suess. During his childhood, as a result of his father's closeness to the Nazi Party, the little Thomas came face to face with Hitler and Goebbels. Now an old frail man, Harlan lives in a respiratory clinic in Berchtesgaden. It is in this clinic in South Germany that he, along with documentary filmmaker Christoph Hübner, examines fragments of his past. After the Second World War Harlan moved to Berlin and then to France. He met with Gilles Deleuze and Klaus...
In 1943 the Karp family escaped the Nazis by crossing the Pyrenees on foot with the help of the French Resistance. For five harrowing years, they were on the run, sometimes only steps ahead of Hitler’s troops. Carrying the burden of their parent’s trauma, the filmmaker and her sisters return to Europe to confront events of the past in an attempt to separate them from the present. The story is told through interviews with her mother, segments of a book her father wrote, home movies, photographs, documents and historical footage. The mother’s songs are threaded throughout the film. Singing brought relief and hope...