REMARKABLE FILM ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST,
DESTINATION UNKNOWN TO BE RELEASED IN UK CINEMAS 16 JUNE
“Powerful and moving”
Stephen D. Smith, Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation
“Heart breaking, Inspiring, astounding”
Claire Aguilar, Head of Programming, Sheffield Doc/Fest
“A masterful documentary”
Ron B. Meier, Executive Director of the American Society for Yad Vashem
UK, London: Wednesday 3rd May 2017 – Dartmouth Films is honoured to announce the theatrical release of the Gigatel Productions’ film DESTINATION UNKNOWN in UK cinemas from 16th June 2017. Making a unique contribution to the history of the Holocaust, the film captures the pain which still haunts Holocaust survivors 70 years after liberation and the resilience which has enabled them to live with the memories.
Directed by Claire Ferguson (known for editing Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Concert for George, The End of the Line, Guilty Pleasures, Up in Smoke), Produced by Llion Roberts (who has spent fourteen years accumulating the testimonies on which the film is based), DESTINATION UNKNOWN blends intimate testimony with immersive archive to bring the stories of twelve Holocaust survivors to the screen.
The film is released on the back of Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) where the film’s central character and Holocaust survivor Ed Mosberg attended ‘The March of the Living’ alongside thousands of participants in Poland last week. Ed Mosberg will visit the UK for the release of the film in June.
With no narration and no expert interviews, the film relies on the survivors’ own words, to weave a vivid narrative of lives stained by genocide. A seamless mosaic of first-hand accounts, rare archive from the time, and family Super 8 footage from after the war, the film traces their journeys from the outbreak of war, through the misery of the ghettos, to the unimaginable horrors of the camps. The survivors share their memories, some for the first time, some for the last, bringing their experiences to a new generation.
We see those who survived in hiding, those who fought as partisans, and those who endured camps such as Treblinka, Mauthausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau. While a few managed to escape, most had to try to find a way to stay alive until the end of the war.
Their stories do not end with liberation. We see how they had to survive the chaos that came afterwards, and their attempts to build new lives.
The film includes an interview with one of the few escapees from the terror of Treblinka, and an exclusive interview with Mietek Pemper, who helped Oskar Schindler compile his List, as well as a revealing story about Schindler himself from one of those he saved.
Producer Llion Roberts said: “I was inspired to start this project fourteen years ago when I visited Auschwitz and wanted to ensure that the remarkable stories of those who survived the Holocaust were preserved for posterity. In the years since I have met and interviewed a remarkable range of incredible people whose lives are an inspiration to us all. From the four hundred hours of testimony I wanted a film which captured the essence of their experience and made a contribution to the history of those times.”
Director Claire Ferguson said: “I wanted to make a film where the only voices are those of the survivors themselves, to capture something of the intimacy and immediacy I felt when talking with them directly. The challenge was to weave those individual voices together in a way that created a wider story, one that explored not only the pain of the Holocaust itself, but the building of new lives afterwards. My overriding question was, ‘How can you make a life after such pain?’”
DESTINATION UNKNOWN is in cinemas 16 June http://destinationunknownmovie.com/
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