BROKEN DREAMS

Poland, 2019, 70 minutes, Colour/black and white.
Elizabeth Bellak, Aleksandra Bernatek.
Directed by Tomasz Magierski.

The synopsis of his film written by the director:
The compelling story of two Jewish teenage sisters struggling to survive the Holocaust in Nazi occupied Poland. They are both talented: Ariana Elizabeth Bellak (born Ariana Spiegel), a child prodigy, performs on stage in Warsaw shortly before the war. She sings, plays piano, and recites poems. She also appears in several feature films by famous Polish directors and is commonly referred to as the "Polish Shirley Temple". She is nine years old when the war starts. Renia is more introverted, romantic and sensitive. She is a gifted poet who keeps a diary spanning the years 1939 to 1942. Ariana, who currently lives in New York, narrates her story on screen. Her narration intertwines with text from Renia's diary recited by Aleksandra Bernatek, an actress from their home town of Przemysl.

The film opens with a performance in theatre, an elderly woman narrating, singing, reminiscing in English. She is Ariana Bellak, telling stories about herself and her past, especially as a child prodigy before World War II, in her Polish town near Romania, visits to Warsaw, her abilities to sing, recite poetry, and a film career. She also tells stories about her sister, Renia, writer of a diary, with excerpts throughout the film – and the information that the diary was translated into many languages and published in 2019.

There is some contemporary footage from the Polish countryside. However, there is a great deal of documentary war footage, footage of the ghetto in Warsaw. There is also the story of the girl’s mother, her appearance, disappearance, the loss of Renia, mother, and Ariana reunited and eventually sailing to the United States in 1946.

The family is Jewish. However, they shared some of the experience of Jewish families being sheltered by Catholics, especially Catholic nuns – and there is a tribute to them as well as some footage of life in the convent where Ariana was sheltered.

This brief documentary takes its place amongst so many of the stories of Poland in World War II – with touches of the exotic in Ariana’s career as a child and later in the United States and the memories of Anne Frank and war diaries.