The
past might never be dead, but just how deeply can it be buried? That's
the question brothers Franek and Jozek grapple with as they uncover the
secrets of their rural Polish village 60 years after World War II, in
Władysław Pasikowski's controversial film Pokłosie (Aftermath).
Franek
returns to Poland from Chicago when he learns that Jozek's wife has
left him. In an effort to understand why, Franek discovers that Jozek
became a local pariah when he ripped up a road that German occupiers had
paved decades earlier—with headstones from a Jewish cemetery.
Franek
reluctantly supports Jozek's effort to collect the village's remaining
Jewish headstones and erect them in his wheatfield. Villagers who live
on formerly Jewish land try to discourage them—most viscerally through
defacing their home with a dead dog and anti-Semitic graffiti. As they
investigate, the brothers discover that their family's role in the
destruction of the village's Jews was greater than they'd thought. The
result is an unrelenting, unsentimental interrogation of historical
revisionism and the ways grown children try to atone for their fathers –
and a fascinating look at contemporary Poland.
- Leah Falk for Jewniverse
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