SILENCED WALLS / La Cité muette -
une mémoire occultée

 

International Premiere • Documentary • France, 2015

DCP • 1.85 • Dolby 5.1 • Color • 88 min

Directed by: Sabrina Van Tassel

Written by: Sabrina Van Tassel

Cinematography: Sabrina Van Tassel, Cyril Thomas, Estelle Brugerolles, Thibault Delavigne

Film Editing: Yann Leonarduzzi

Original Score: Olivier Adelen

Produced by: Joan Faggianelli, Candice Souillac, Valérie Montmartin (J2F)

US Distributor: Distrib Films US • distribfilmsus.com

US Release Date: September 2015

 

In the suburb of Drancy lies an unadorned block of low-income housing. With some of the cheapest rents to be had in Paris, it is the residence of some 500 impoverished retirees, recently homeless, and mentally disabled. On the surface everything seems normal enough, children improvise games beneath its stark façade. But what do the residents know of the site’s dark history? What would they say if they knew their home was haunted – by 80,000 ghosts? COLCOA presents the International Premiere of this documentary exploring the building that in 1940 became the central internment camp for Jews during the Nazi occupation of France. Nearly every Jew arrested in France came through its austere lodgings, most on their way to the death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Known to Jews as the “antechamber of death,” it remains the most notorious Holocaust site in all of France, at once damned and sacred. But what does all this mean to the people who live there now? Is it possible to find happiness between the same walls that have born witness to such misery?

 

While shooting Rivka’s Tribe (2010), a documentary about six brothers and sisters recalling their childhood in Nazi occupied France, writer/director Sabrina Van Tassel discovered the existence of the Drancy camp. Although considered the biggest Shoah site in France, Van Tassel expected to find little more than a commemorative plaque. But when she visited the place, she immediately wanted some answers. How could such a place still exist? And since it did exist, why wasn’t it a museum? As a journalist for French TV, Van Tassel has an extensive background in investigative reporting, with more than 30 TV documentaries under her belt since 2004. Notable documentaries include Married for the worst (2004), and Shalom India: Tsahal’s lost soldiers (2008).