Trailer

Synopsis

On April 28, 1945, ferries with survivors from the German concentration camps arrive at the harbor of Malmö, Sweden. Now, 70 years later, the survivors see this footage for the first time and recognize themselves. They relive the happiness, confusion and insecurity of that extraordinary day when life began again. All are united in this moment of liberation. Scenes identical to those in 1945 are repeated all over the world today. Endless stream of war anonymous refugees forced to leave their home countries.

Director

• 

  Magnus Gertten
  

  Becoming Zlatan (2015)
  Tusen bitar (2014)

  Many documentaries start with taking on a big challenge. By trying to do the practically impossible. This is also the case with Every Face Has a Name. I was fascinated beyond belief by a film reel showing WWII survivors arriving at the harbor of Malmö, Sweden on April 28, 1945. I wanted to know: How many of the anonymous faces would it be possible to identify 70 years later?
  My team at Auto Images has been researching this historic footage since 2008. At this point, we’ve identified and found the names of about 60 out of the hundreds of survivors from German concentration camps that appear in the archive footage. Surprisingly, several of them were still alive. Nine of them ended up as the main characters in Every Face Has a Name.
  This documentary has a clear-cut humanitarian mission. The people in the archive footage are not just anonymous victims; they are real people with names like all of us. My film is – in an almost ceremonial way – giving back the names to many of the survivors who arrived in Malmö, Sweden on April 28, 1945.
  To me, this is a film with huge contemporary relevance. Every week via international news media, we see endless streams of war refugees arriving at harbor and border stations. For quite some time I’ve had the idea of comparing the situation in 1945 to the present global war refugee situation. Finding the right harbor was tough, but finally I was lucky. On July 1, 2014, my team and I were present at small Sicilian harbor when close to 600 refugees arrived after a dramatic journey across the Mediterranean. Being there had a great impact on me. If I in any way can change people’s views on the displaced people coming from horrific circumstances all over the world today, then my work has truly accomplished something.
  Every director has their trademark. My style has always been very intimate. Bringing the audience close the main characters through sensitive and emotionally strong interviews is a cornerstone. In Every Face Has a Name, I combined the emotional power of individual portraits with a concept based on a magical exploration of a 35 mm film reel from 1945. My ambition was to make the film reel one of the main characters in the doc. Sophisticated editing and high-end technology—including a new 4k scan—revealed more detail and helped us create ”new scenes” in the archive footage.
  One important element in my artistic method is the team building. Making films is like playing in a rock band. It doesn’t matter if you’re the singer and the songwriter; you still need a solid bass player and a rhythmic drummer to depend on. In this respect, I’d like to give a special mention to one key band member: Jesper Osmund, a film editor from Copenhagen, who’s been there through seven documentaries so far. His storytelling abilities on the highest international level are of huge importance for the film. Portions of the same archive material were used in my 2011 documentary
  Harbour of Hope, which provides a historic context in regard to the almost 30,000 survivors from German concentration camps that, came to Sweden in 1945. In Every Face Has a Name I tell the

Review

A group of shabby people get off a ship. They wave their hand to the camera. The people with looks of a pleasure, confusion, sadness, relief, expectation and hope are those who were imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp, and now got released and arrived as the status of refugees at a port of Sweden. When we see such image on TV news, we just perceive the people as a lump of ‘refugees’ or as figures of the statistics. However, they are individuals with each own voice and story. As the title suggests, this film gets each of the people filmed on the day their own names back. Tracking and finding the people scattering all over the world, this documentary film team shows the archival footage where the people was filmed in and listens to what they remember. A boy who has been dressed as a girl since his age of 3 lest he should be discovered that he is a Jew, an American girl who was mistaken for a Jew and arrested by Gestapo when she visited a relative in Italy, a man who were participating in the Norway resistance when he was arrested. One survival story follows after another. Most of the people who see their images filmed 70 years ago still remember how they felt and what they thought on the day, which suggests how unforgettable and important the day was for them. We see other people situated in similar place in current days; the refugees fleeing from the variety of the hardship to Europe. In the ending part of the film, the director asks audience to listen to their life story while getting them their names back. [Park Moon-chil]

Credits

• Director  Magnus Gertten
• Producer  Lennart Ström, Magnus Gertten
• Cinematographer  Adam Makarenko, Caroline Troedsson
• Editor  Jesper Osmund
• Music  Hans Appelqvist
• Sound  Audun Røstad, Jørgen Meyer

Contribution / World Sales

• Contribution / World Sales  Rise And Shine World Sales UG
• Phone  49 30 4737 298 0
• E-mail  anja.dziersk@riseandshine-berlin.de
• Website  http://www.riseandshine-berlin.com