MR. RAKOWSKI

"I still remember today the pain, the terrible pain", says 91-year-old Auschwitz survivor Sam Rakowski. After surviving the horrors of the camps, Sam and his wife Celia emigrated to the United States. Since Celia’s death, Sam, filled with bitterness, has lived in a small house next door to his son Richie, a 55-year-old successful New York businessman. After a traumatic childhood, Richie tries to redefine his extremely difficult relationship to a detached, sometimes aggressive father, who bears the psychological scars of both the Holocaust and the death of his first son. Richie desperately wants to understand his father but the gap between them seems almost unbridgeable: they are divided by fear of loss, jealousy, withdrawal of love and feelings of guilt … The traumas on both sides are deeply rooted. Jan Diederen’s camera acts like a vigilant mediator, enabling a painful process of communication between them. This is a fascinating and touching portrait of a father and a son, with the camera as a psychoanalytical medium, - an unexpectedly optimistic film.