The Birch Tree Meadow

Introduction by Richard Peña, Professor of Professional Practice in Film, Columbia University, at the 8:15pm screening

Anouk Aimée and August Diehl star in this astounding autobiographical drama by Marceline Loridan-Ivens, a French filmmaker and memoirist who passed away in 2018. Aimée plays Myriam, a filmmaker and Holocaust survivor who has lived in New York for years. When she returns to Europe for a reunion of fellow survivors, she confronts her past and visits Auschwitz, the scene of her “murdered adolescence.” There, she meets Diehl’s Oskar, a young photographer coming to grips with his grandfather’s role in the SS. This extraordinary film, which screened in the 2004 NYJFF, is a profoundly moving reflection on memory from a true iconoclast of French cinema.