The Cemetery Club

The Cemetery Club

(Mo'adon Beit Ha'kvarot), Tali Shemesh / IZR, 2006
Hebrew-Polish version / Czech sub-subtitules, 90 min

After the establishment of Israel, the remains of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, were transferred to a mountain, which now bears his name. A cemetery was built in this place and important figures are still buried there to this day. This is the site where a group of people who are now old have been congregating for two decades. Besides the memories that they devote to the dead, they also discuss philosophy, morality, conscience and guilt. They organise picnics, read poetry and contemplate the fate of the Jews. This documentary is complemented by a personal story in which the filmmaker Tali Shemesh follows two women - her grandmother Minia and her great aunt Lena, who survived being imprisoned in a concentration camp. She records their memories, asks them questions and observes them in their natural environment in order to uncover family secrets and to understand the generation that lived through the War. The film sensitively takes a close look at the generation that survived the holocaust, which still has enough strength to enjoy a rich and meaningful life despite what happened to them.