Marisa Fox: My Underground Mother

2022 Filmmaker In Residence

MY UNDERGROUND MOTHER is a documentary feature about the filmmaker’s search for understanding about her late mother Tamar, a fiery redhead and self-proclaimed hero of the Israeli underground, who kept her childhood in Poland a secret. “I was never a Holocaust victim,” she told her only daughter. Twenty years after her death, Fox stumbles on a family secret and realizes her mother had a hidden identity. What follows is a trail of clues to a ghost factory in the Czech Republic: the site of Gabersdorf, a Nazi-run women’s camp. A hidden diary bearing her and sixty inmates’ writing helps Fox unlock her secret past. In an intergenerational reclaiming of a lost women’s history, MY UNDERGROUND MOTHER challenges Holocaust tropes and explores issues afflicting women today. What is a woman’s worth? What is the price of survival and silence? How can we reconcile with the invisible scars of our mothers?

Marisa Fox is a veteran journalist and first-time filmmaker whose work spans print, broadcast, and digital platforms. She has produced award-winning stories and social impact campaigns for Hearst, Time Inc., and others, and written for outlets including The New York Times, CNN, Ms., The Forward, and Ha’aretz. Her reporting often centers on gender, genocide, extremism, and sexual trauma. A “she source” for the Women’s Media Center, Fox made her directorial debut with My Underground Mother, which led to the unveiling of Holocaust memorials in Poland and the Czech Republic, and a digital exhibit with USC’s Shoah Foundation.

Project description and bios courtesy of the Resident

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2022 Filmmaker in Residence