PASSAGES
Unlocking family myths and secrets. Finding a legacy.
Six-months pregnant, filmmaker Gabriela Böhm, searches for family connections. Traveling to Eastern Europe, Israel, and South America, she unlocks family myths and secrets. By exploring the impact of the Holocaust on her family and other traumas, she discovers her legacy. A legacy that she’ll pass on to her child as they make a life together in the United States.
Sometimes we must unlock the pain of the past to ensure a more hopeful future. Passages chronicles the personal odyssey of filmmaker Gabriela Böhm before the birth of her child as she journeys to understand who she is and where she came from.
From Hungary to Romania to Israel and finally to Argentina , Gabriela investigates and learns truths that allow her to bridge the gap between being a daughter of Holocaust survivors and her new life as a mother and American citizen.
““Passages’ riveting pace and revelations are balanced by laughter and light-hearted moments, along with footage that transports the viewer from country to country. Above all, the documentary offers hope of birth after death and a continuance of life.” ”
"I decided to make Passages when I became pregnant. I wanted to unveil my family history so I could pass on its legacy to the next generation—my son. I traveled through four continents seeking out my relatives so they could take me to the places that defined their lives, places they had kept hidden from me.
I knew that going to these places might shock me, even devastate me, but I needed to know the truth—to uncover their long-harbored mysteries, myths and secrets. I wanted to understand my life journey and how the horrors my parents experienced had impacted me.
As I discovered the connections between my parents’ lives and mine—the meaning behind the choices I had made—I understood the truths that forged these connections. The stories they finally told me helped me to create my own narrative—my own truthful narrative. The narrative that, one day, I would communicate to my child.
The film is about my odyssey. It is about the process that enabled me to draw strength and wisdom from a dark past and make sense of myself as a woman, a mother, a Jew and, most recently, a new American citizen." - Gabriela Böhm
Credits
GABRIELA BÖHM, Producer/Director
MOLLY O'BRIEN, Director of Photography & Sound
SHIRIN BAZLEH, Editor
DON GRADY, Composer
Film Notes
- Documentary feature (66 minutes)
- Video/color
- Spanish, Hungarian, Hebrew and English
- Available with English or Spanish subtitles