The Fundy Film Society

Fugitive Pieces

Adapted from Anne Michael’s acclaimed prose-poem novel, Fugitive Pieces is a harrowing and haunting tale of Holocaust survival and personal awakening. The film opens in Poland, as young Jakob Berr is hidden away just before German soldiers storm into his Jewish family’s home. After watching his parents murdered and his sister dragged away to an uncertain fate, Jakob flees and hides in the woods. He is discovered by a kindly Greek archaeologist, Athos, who smuggles the sickly Jakob back to his own island home and hides him for the rest of the war. Years later, having moved to Canada, the grownup Jakob has become a writer struggling to articulate his childhood horrors, haunted by the mystery of his sister’s fate. But after his troubled emotions lead to the breakup of his marriage to the free-spirited Alex, Jakob must exorcise the ghosts of his past if he is to close a traumatic chapter of his life and find beauty in the present. Director Jeremy Podeswa ably shifts between the different stages of Jakob’s life, showing how grief can continue to influence one’s actions–or inaction–in the years that follow a tragedy. Handsomely shot and thoughtfully acted, Fugitive Pieces is a touching testimony to the power of remembrance and redemption.