A film by Roz Mortimer
Interpreter, Poland Magda Bartosz
Translator Dorota Miklasinska
Production Assistant, London Eva Lis
Sound Recordist Jeremy Williams
Sound Design & Mix Scanner
Digital Effects Joe Pavlo
Edit Consultants Lucy Harris, Laura Malacart
Colourist Sue Giovanni

Thanks to:
Simon Aeppli, Abigail Addison, Adam Bartosz, Janina Buczek, Tony Bukraba, David Dytlof, Eliano Dytlof, Gloria Dytlof, Krystyna Dytlof, Angie Emmerson, Natalia Gancarz, Krystyna Gil, Sue Giovanni, Szymon Gonska, Anna Gofron, Božena Grabowska, Diana Grabowska, Tim Higgins, Martin Huczko, Zofia Kilian, Lucjan Kołodiejski, Rafał Kołodziej, Amber Linell, Matthew Lolo, Siobhan Ryan, Józef Siudut, Paulina Solecka, Maria Szczawińska, Gracian Szoma, Gary Thomas

A forensic examination of memory and place.

The hidden history of the Roma Holocaust in Poland as told through the testimony of five witnesses and survivors and partially re-voiced by Roma children. Seventy years after the event these people are still living next door to the mass graves of Roma families… some marked, but others long forgotten amongst the forests and wheat fields of southern Poland.

Mortimer’s camera probes these landscapes, forensically examining memory and place, finding a tension and resonance between the natural world and contemporary life as it rushes by.

Unable to forget, yet choosing until now not to talk of what they had seen, the film vibrates between the present day and the remembered past.

‘It stuck with us for the rest of our lives… for me, this is for the rest of my life, before my eyes, that moment, everything. It was the greatest tragedy of my life.’

I set out to make a film about landscape and forgetting, but after encountering these five people it became a film about the impossibility of forgetting. While the rest of Europe gladly forgets the genocide of the Roma, these villagers quite literally live with the trauma of their memories every day.