Im Land meiner Eltern

Filmmaker Jeanine Meerapfel has been the president of Berlin’s Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) since 2015. She was born in 1943 in Argentina, where her parents fled to escape fascism in Europe. She has lived in Germany since 1964. In 1981, two years after the mini-series Holocaust aired, she interviewed Jews of her generation in West Berlin about their Jewish identity – including stage director Luc Bondy, painter Sarah Haffner and screen legend Eva Ebner. Shot in their kitchens, living rooms and studios, at family gatherings or at work, they talked about feelings of home and their fears, about the lack of reckoning with Nazi crimes, and about xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the present day. Some of what they said is shockingly topical. “For me, it has a lot to do with the fact that, in schools, they talk about the Holocaust, but not about Jewish culture and religion and what they mean. As long as they are not dealing with that, in order to establish understanding, there will be misunderstanding and hate.” (Jeanine Meerapfel, 2022, Federal Agency for Civic Education, bpb.de) (Berlinale)