DAS LIED IN MIR/THE DAY I WAS NOT BORN

Germany, 2010, 94 minutes, Colour.
Jessica Schwartz, Michael Gwisdeck, Rafael Ferro.
Directed by Florian Miccoud Cossens.

The English title is much more serious than might be first thought. But, the German title, The Song Inside Me, is an effective one – the central character is a young woman in her late 20s, a champion swimmer, who begins a quest to find out who she really is and who her family is. She hears a woman singing a song at an airport and it evokes long hidden memories and sets her on her journey.

This would be interesting enough in itself, but the story takes us from the comfort of growing up in affluent Germany to memories of the dictatorship in Argentina and the fate of those who were called ‘The Disappeared’. This has been the theme of a number of Argentinian films, Lamb of God and Cautiva. In the latter, there is a school girl who discovers that she was adopted and that officials at the time of the dictatorship had taken possession of her.

This means that films like this are not simply about the search for identity. They have repercussions for the adopting parents, especially if the paths to the adoption were not entirely legal or moral.

Jessica Schwartz holds the audience attention as the young woman deciding, on an impulse after missing a flight connection to Chile, to go to Buenos Aires instead. Michael Gwisdek is the devoted father who has not revealed the past to his daughter and, even flying to join her in Argentina, is still more than hesitant. With the aid of a local policeman (who had wheedled a bribe from her when she reported her passport missing but with whom she has a relationship, meeting his genial father who was in the police at the time she was born), she discovers another family and relishes their company.

Approaching thirty, she already has a full life but has to work out how to incorporate this new awareness, of her murdered parents, of her new relations, into the life she has been used to.

The film has been made with deep feeling and deep concern. The audience shares this. Ecumenical Award in Montreal 2010.

1. The topicality of the film? The Germans? Argentina?

2. The German title, the song, its place in Maria’s memory and consciousness? Its significance? The English title and the emphasis on Maria and her identity, Germany and Argentina?

3. The settings in Argentina, the settings in Germany? The musical score and the song?

4. Maria, the story, aged 31, the background of the late 1970s and early 1980s? A German, young woman, on her way to Chile, having no knowledge of Spanish, her relationship with her father, her background and education in Germany, her being contented with her identity?

5. Hearing the song, the experience, familiarity, the lyrics, not knowing Spanish, singing? The effect, disturbing, the decision to stay in Buenos Aires? Wandering the city, the effect?

6. The phone call to her father? His response, reassurance? His arriving in Buenos Aires? Sudden, the effect on Maria?

7. Their talk, the difficulty for his explanation, Maria and her three years in Argentina, the background of the dictatorship? The killing of her natural parents? Her being sheltered? The wealthy Germans and their adoption of children? Going back to Germany and remembering nothing of her early life? It’s being concealed from her?

8. The people in Buenos Aires, the hotel clerk, at the kiosk, the police, the lazy woman, the joking police?

9. Maria, the decision to search for her parents, the role of her father, his concern about his relationship with his daughter?

10. Aleyandro, helping, genial, interpreter?

11. The details of the search, gathering information, the revelation about the past, the parents’ death, what happened to children, being saved, adopted? The story of her parents’ death?

12. The effect on Maria, on her father? A sense of identity having to cope? Her future relationships?