Kredens

The credenza, a massive piece of furniture for storage and display, impossible to move, is the unalterable mirror of family unity and continuity. All respectable families in Germany and Poland own one. The filmmaker’s maternal grandparents also had theirs, as their pride and joy. But History came along and, in 1968, in the wake of an anti-Semitic campaign led by the Communist Party, the family was forced to leave, abandoning their precious sideboard. And this symbol of bourgeois success changed into the silent hurt of exile and the family’s dispersion between Denmark and Israel. The sideboard’s fate is buried under a family silence that the filmmaker has never managed to lift, despite his persistence. So, against his mother’s advice, he sets off to Poland in search of the famous credenza, hoping that the Poles will furnish the answers his family withhold from him and determined to find the sideboard and bring it back to Denmark. This produces a film with a dual edge: one that is full of humour despite the cruelty of the subject matter. Daily calls to mother who never fails to give her son a telling off, and after long waits outside doors that remain obstinately closed, an inventory of the multiple forms of anti-Semitism, from the mispronounced name to the sly questioning about religion, not forgetting the backhanded compliments. (Yann Lardeau)