Reconstruction

The Jewish grandmother of filmmaker Irene Lusztig was arrested in 1959; along with five men, she had robbed a bank. Subsequently, the Romanian Communist Party ordered the making of a film about the hold-up and the resulting trial, for which the six convicts were forced to play themselves. More than forty years later, Lusztig uses extracts from this remarkable, shocking film - called Reconstituirea - for her own reconstruction of the case. In addition, she shows interviews with relatives and acquaintances of her grandmother, including her mother, and travels to Israel, where her grandmother died. Her film leaves room for different interpretations, thus making up a metaphor for the confrontation of Romania with its recent history. But apart from being an essay about history and truth in film, it is chiefly a personal history of three generations of women. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)