19. 91

Poland, 2019, 24'

SCREENING FOR SCHOOLS

Jette, a German 19-year-old, decides to spend her year of volunteering in Warsaw. She visits 91-year-old Mrs. Zofia every day. Through their meetings, characterized by the slow pace of the elderly lady and her daily chores (shopping at the market, cooking for lunch), the young woman comes to know details of Zofia’s past: when she was her age, she experienced war and was in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck; over those years, she also lost her dear ones. It is difficult to imagine today, in the quiet of Zofia’s home, all the pain she has gone through, distant, but only in terms of time. Talking with Jette makes painful memories resurface, but sharing them with a young person who will bring them with her and take care of them is soothing; it gives the hope that women from different generations can understand each other. Within the intimate relationship that takes shape between the two characters, the younger one becomes the repository of the wisdom and memory of the older, in the hope that the knowledge of past grief helps avoid recurring horrors and errors.