Czech Film Center

Synopsis

For seven years, Lukáš Přibyl researched and filmed Forgotten Transports, a series of four unique documentaries based on the recollections of Czech Jewish eyewitnesses deported to virtually unknown concentration camps and ghettos in Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and eastern Poland. The films have none of the grand narratives usually associated with movies about the Holocaust. Rather, they tell gripping stories without any commentary, through a montage of interviews with the handful of survivors - most describing what happened to them for the first time - and previously unseen photographs and film drawn from archives, the garages of former SS troops and a variety of other sources. Every detail is painstakingly documented with authentic visuals from the precise time and place. This approach is highly effective in bringing out the private perspectives and recollections of each individual, since the witnesses describe only about what they experienced themselves. Together, their limited points of view build into a surprising new picture of the Holocaust and different styles of survival. [A beautifully restrained soundtrack heightens but never disrupts the action.] Edited down from 260 hours of raw footage, shot in over twenty countries on three continents, the complete project consists of four films (six hours in all) that can be screened individually or as a series.