Franek looks peeved as he lands in Warsaw and makes for the rural Polish village he left behind in the dying years of Communism. While not expecting a happy homecoming from his estranged brother Jozek, he isn’t prepared to be pulled into a struggle over ghosts from the past—a history the villagers want to keep buried but Jozek is determined to disinter.
Directed by Władysław Pasikowski, Aftermath resides closer to fable than realism and draws from the unsettling devices of gothic fiction to tell its story of the Holocaust’s enduring reverberations. Anti-Semitism was rife in Poland as World War II began and some Poles benefitted from the murder of their Jewish neighbors. In Aftermath , the ghostly reminders of that past are the tombstones from the old Jewish cemetery, used by the Nazis for paving roads and the locals as steppingstones. Seized by a mania to recover the grave markers and reassemble the cemetery, Jozek explains, “I kind of figured it [destroying the cemetery] wasn’t right.” Although at first incredulous, Franek is drawn into Jozek’s fight.
Menace hovers: Twigs snap ominously in the surrounding woods, a rock is hurled through Jozek’s window, the bank denies Jozek a loan for mysterious reasons and Franek is being followed. While the old parish priest supports Jozek, his younger colleague is opposed, and most of the villagers stare with narrow, hateful eyes at the brothers. There are other secrets beside the buried tombstones. The village wants them kept concealed.
7:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 20 as part of the Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival. The festival runs Oct. 19-23 at the Marcus North Shore Cinema. For more information, go to jccmilwaukee.org/filmfestival.
