Recipient of a 2023 JFI Completion Grant
Daughterland documents a daughter’s obsession with her father’s untold story of survival. A poignant exploration of the lingering effects of trauma, the film chronicles one family’s struggle over identity, contested memory, and the reverberations of a father’s choices across generations. Shot over thirty years, Daughterland features interviews with filmmaker Eva Brzeski's father and other family members, each holding versions of his story and various personal grudges. Home movies reveal a complex character, brooding and cantankerous, but with a zany joie de vivre. Fragments from his unfinished memoir carry us into the world of his boyhood, while my longing to connect takes me into an imagined past of strangers in strange lands. Richly textured and evocative, the film explores questions of identity, survival and self-determination.
Description provided by grantee.
Eva Ilona Brzeski is the writer, director and editor of Daughterland, Fellow American, This Unfamiliar Place, 24 Girls, and China Diary, and director and editor of Last Seen. Her films have garnered numerous awards and have been described by Filmmaker Magazine as "sumptuous, intriguing work... aesthetically dazzling.”