Hiding and Seeking

Synopsis

Hiding and Seeking is a dramatic morality tale, where expectations of heroes and villains are overturned by a series of cascading plot twists. Based on a true story, Hiding and Seeking will crosscut between two historically charged time frames: 1989—during the fall of Communist control in Poland—and 1942, when the German army ferociously begins the deportations of Jews during its murderous campaign. 
 

The film opens on the chaotic streets of 1989 Brooklyn with a Polish woman getting off the elevated subway line. Honorata Mucha, 49 years old, walks among the mix of Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jews of Boro Park, who live alongside their Caribbean and Polish neighbors. She seeks out the Jewish brothers whom her parents hid under their barn in Dzialoszyce, Poland during World War II. Appearing on the doorstep of the Federman family, she is eyed suspiciously by Manny and Rivke, a middle-aged couple, as she tells a story they have never heard: Rivke’s father and brothers made promises that were not kept. Property that was supposed to be handed over to Honorata’s parents was sold, leaving the family in dire straits. Now, her desperately sick child back home needs treatment, and there is no money, nor a health care system to save him.

Director’s Statement

Oren Rudavsky

In the intimate style of Roman Polanski’s masterpiece, The Pianist, we will revisit the daily lives of the Federman and the Mucha families as they precariously live side by side in the small rural pre-World War II town of Dzialoszyce. We revisit the past, when the Muchas volunteer for the heroic and potentially lethal task of hiding the three brothers. We will intercut the present and see both families many years later, grappling with their nearly forgotten interconnections and confronting the Muchas’ resentment at the Federmans’ lack of contact with their Polish rescuers. 

Our film will stress the details of daily life before the Nazi invasion, where we see the Mucha family and the Federman’s in their ordinary existence. We will intercut past and present and the crucial and climactic visit of the Federman family in 1989 and the resolution afterwards in Poland and in New York.