A Holocaust survivors navigates the difficulties of assimilation with the burden of her past, in 1950s Brooklyn.

Director’s Vision for ‘New Lives’

NEW LIVES is Polish language period piece. It’s both a continuation of my work, both an intense psychological portrait of Holocaust survivors in America, but also a way of unearthing my own family history. Unlike most kids growing up, I never knew my grandparents. They passed away in the 90s, long before I was born. What always struck was never my grandparents’ experiences in the camps. Painful, terrible, awful, but it’s something which has been documented in movies and books. What’s never really documented was the story that took place after liberation. I realized that the less explored perspective was that of a woman during these experiences. While my grandfather was able to be employed because he spoke English well, my grandmother stayed in the apartment, assisting the Super of the building. She was a house cleaner, a gloried janitor. My dad said that she’d never let anyone know her profession, out of a sense of shame and embarrassment. It was that detail that helped me realize that it was her story, Manusha. It would be about a young woman dealing with the trauma of the past with a husband who seemingly is able to get past it. That’s where the character of Leo came in. He’s married to an American woman with a young child — and is miserable due to the fact that he lost his own family in the war. The Elephants, they’re affectionately referred to in the film, though they are a mirror image of Manusha and Josef. Through Manusha’s relationship with Leo — she has to make a choice, between living in the past, or bracing for the future. But the decision is somewhere in between. Manusha, Josef, and Leo are each different representations of how we deal with trauma. Healing the wounds of the past is complicated, and takes times — but it’s worth actively dealing with. Burying it, or getting lost in it — does no one either good. So I see Manusha’s journey as a metaphor for my own life — that there is never an easy answer, that there will be no quick solution — but that if we put in the effort, if we strive to honor the past while wanting to move forward – we can begin to heal.