Les Enfants de Sam

“Guilty of being alive”. The only surviving member of his family who perished at Auschwitz, Sam Braun was sent home to France at the end of June 1945. Twice married, he has two daughters and two sons. “The children of deported parents belong to a sacrificed generation. They are either imprisoned by unspoken words or fed on memories”, he says. For forty years, Sam was unable to utter a word to either his two wives or his four children. Then came the day when he finally accepted a friendly invitation to give his account of the unspeakable in front of secondary-school students. The filmmaker builds up the portrait of Sam by juxtaposing the confidences made by his children. Each focuses on a particular aspect of Sam’s story, being forced to imagine it as the details are unfamiliar. Each in his or her own way gradually fits together the missing pieces of a personal jigsaw puzzle. And behind their father’s hidden suffering they discover the destroyed teenager that they have always sought to protect.