Synopsis

How did a young bird watcher meet his death in the dungeons of the Nazis? The film maker tells the story of her uncle, who went into the resistance as a young boy and that was almost immediately fatal.

Not just another one of those many personal documentaries about the Second World War. Not just another arrangement of archive footage from a long lost black and white era. This is an honest attempt to give the concept of personal involvement a less threadbare substance. An ingenious attempt to adapt and free old images into new impressions, without taking away their authenticity. A successful attempt to give voice, with polyphonic sound editing, to images made silent and hidden. The film maker tells the story of her uncle, who joined the resistance as a boy, a step that proved almost immediately fatal. He was a young nature lover who did not write political pamphlets but noted down bird observations. The editing by the film maker has given these observations a very poetic element. Hanlo borrowed the title of the film from what was written on an envelope by her grandmother to her grandfather at his address in hiding during the Second World War. In an envelope like that, she also had reported the news that their son had been arrested by the Nazis and was forced to play the role of a hero by conditions at the time. With this film, the film maker in turn wants to keep the news alive and pass it on to a new generation of people `whom it may concern'.

Source: catalogue International Film Festival Rotterdam