About the Film
Director Marisa Fox expected to attend
Twenty years after her mother’s death, journalist Marisa Fox unearths a family secret. She knew her mom as Tamar, the infamous redheaded freedom fighter in British mandate Palestine—not as Hela, a Polish-born survivor of a Jewish women’s forced labor camp in Nazi-occupied Sudetenland. As Marisa delves deeper, she discovers her mother’s writing in a journal written by the camp’s teenage prisoners and tracks them down across the globe. They share a shocking, untold story of sexual trauma and agency, as Marisa reckons with the postwar shaming that fueled her mother’s reinvention. Riveting written and filmed testimonies, striking animation, and compelling vérité footage track a daughter’s search for an unknown mother, revealing a harrowing story of sisterhood and resistance.
2022 Filmmaker in Residence
World Premiere
Filmmaker Bio(s)
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.
