ZYKLON PORTRAIT

Underneath a seemingly clinical and scientific look at how the Nazis transformed Zyklon B gas from pesticide to genocidal weapon lies the enormity of one family's loss. Schogt interviews her mother about her never-talked-about experiences as a Jewish survivor of the second world war, and asks about her grandmother, who perished in Auschwitz. With a collage of instructional archival films, family photographs, home movies, underwater photography, and hand-painted imagery, the filmmaker tries to reconcile with the past, as she traces three generations of women. The approach is personal and subjective, and the horror of the Holocaust is conveyed without using a single frame of Holocaust footage. Inevitably, the act of making the film gives way to finding shape and form for unspeakable, unshowable memories.