Season 1
10 episodes
0 min. per episode
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Haunted by their violent pasts, survivors confront inherited trauma, forging resilience while seeking redemption in a fractured world.
Episodes
In the 1940's a teenager gymnast in Kassa, Edith was aiming to get into the Hungarian Olympic Team but she could not become a member because she was from a Jewish family. In 1944 with her parents and sister, she was deported to Auschwitz where the notorious Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele tore her out from the row which was lining up to the gas chambers. Mengele promised Edit that she would meet with her mother soon who was "just going to have a shower". Edith's parents were killed on that day. Not long after she found herself in front of Mengele who commanded the prisoners to dance - and Edith started to dance for The Blue Danube Waltz while closing her eyes. This is how she survived the death camp. Now she lives in San Diego with her family, her house decorated with ballerinas looks at the Pacific ocean, she is 90 years old and she still works as a family therapist. (The autobiography of Edith Eva Eger, 'The Choice' has been among the top 10 best selling books in Hungary for 12 consecutive months following the broadcast of On the Spot's documentary.)
In Sarajevo recently opened the first war museum that concentrates on children who grew up during the war. The three protagonists of our film are three young Bosnian adults who were children during the longest siege of history. Kemal only remembers images and feelings from the war so he rationally cannot explain what traumas caused his panic attacks from darkness and lightnings for years. Asja remembers everything: she almost died twice when she found herself in the middle of grenades and snipers at the age of 6. As a screenwriter she used writing and filmmaking as a therapy in order to get rid of her nightmares. Our third protagonist, Mela was one of the faces of the siege in the international press because the story of the beautiful ballet dancer girl touched both war correspondents and viewers around the world. She wrote over 1000 diary entries during the war. Many times her life was in danger but she was almost killed 10 years after the war in London where she was hit by a double-decker bus. She was in a coma for five weeks and lost all her memories. A long therapy brought back her traumatic memories with the help of diary entries and the archival footages about her - Three very different structures of memories about growing up in the daily shadow of death during the siege.
During the Vietnam War hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers were fighting in Vietnam. Tens of thousands were born as children of Vietnamese mothers and foreign fathers, among them were two protagonists of our film, Tuy and Brian. They left Vietnam as members of the so-called "Amerasian" minority. They grew up in the US but recently moved back to their country of birth. The third protagonist of the film is Landon who was left in an orphanage with his twin sister after their mother's death. Their lives were at constant risk because of the lack of supplies. Within the framework of Operation Babylift, "Amerasian" orphans were supposed to be rescued from Vietnam by the US Army, but the first plane tragically crashed. On that plane travelled Landon with his twin sister - Through a miraculous story this episode describes how Brian, Tuy and Landon lived their Vietnamese and adoptee identities in the US, and why they returned to Vietnam where they became best friends.
Shin was born and grew up in a strict North Korean prison camp. As a teenager he denounced his own mother and brother for planning their escape which led to their execution Shin had to watch. When he escaped to South Korea through China as a young adult, he had to learn what life outside the prison camp meant. He needed to understand such basic concepts like time, freedom, family or money. How can Shin live with his past in the extremely modern society of Seoul after the darkest side of North Korea? Can he ever recover from his painful memories?
Under the Communist regime often entire families were sent to work camps. András Visky was born in 1957 as the son of a pastor of the Reformist Church. When his father was imprisoned, András and his whole family was transported to a lager town on the Baragan-lowland. While spending 6 years in the harsh conditions that killed many fellow inmates, he experienced humiliation and the cruel world of Communist work camps early on. He was treated as guilty even though he was just an innocent child. Now András is a well-known writer and director, working primarily at the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In his works he regularly processes memories of captivity and guilt. How can a Transylvanian Hungarian writer deal with the traumas of his past - before and after the democratic change of the political system in Romania?
People who were born in the wrong place at the wrong time. As an infant or as a child they had to survive the darkest moments of the history of the 20th century: in the Second World War, in Communist work camps, in the Vietnam War, in the most notorious prison of the Khmer Rouge, in the Sarajevo Siege or in a North Korean prison camp. How did they survive? As adults, how did they come to terms with their past and the burdensome history they experienced? What can they do with the miracle that they survived? This character-driven documentary film series is set in the present, but its theme is closely tied to history: we explore how the circumstances of our birth influence our lives, whether traumas can be inherited and what strategies different people choose to process their past.