MATRILINEAL

Matrilineal is a self-authored documentary that follows my search to understand a part of my family history that was almost lost. After my grandmother died, I discovered a collection of journals, letters and documents hidden among her belongings that revealed a Jewish heritage I had never fully known. As I piece together the fragments she left behind, I uncover a family story shaped by displacement, survival and the choices that caused histories to fade across generations. Through family memories and archival records, the film follows my journey to understand how this part of our identity was lost and what it means to reclaim it.

Told from my perspective, the film explores grief, memory and identity as I piece together the story of my family. Through conversations with relatives, archival materials and my own reflections, I investigate how my family's religious identity shifted from Judaism to Catholicism, and how this history gradually disappeared across generations.

At the heart of the film is my grandmother. As I uncover stories of her life and the lives of those who came before her, a more complex picture begins to emerge. The documents I found revealed that my great-grandfather's family fled Nazi Germany, with some relatives settling in England. They later adopted my grandmother, who was herself a child refugee from Nazi Germany.

As I follow these traces of the past, Matrilineal becomes both an investigation into family history and a personal journey of self-discovery. Through the fragments left behind, I attempt to reconnect with a heritage that was hidden, forgotten, or deliberately left untold.