To Life

À la vie

Helene, Lili and Rose met in Auschwitz, where the three twenty-year-old Jewish girls were deported. Thanks to German-speaking Dutch Lili, who was working in the camp kitchen, the two French girls survived.

However, after the liberation of the camp, they lost touch. Lili went back to the Netherlands. Rose married a former deportee and settled down in Canada. Helene returned home to France, where she met an old childhood sweetheart, and married him, aware of his impotency caused by sinister doctors carrying out experiments on him in the concentration camp.

Determined to find her old companions, Helene puts an ad in a deportees newspaper. Against all odds, the ad is answered and the women are reunited. The reunion takes place in Berck Plage in the north of France. The women rediscover each other, as well as help each other to overcome their Auschwitz demons.

Nominated for the Variety Piazza Grande Award at the Locarno International Film Festival and the CST Award at the Lumiere Awards