Memory Is Our Homeland

What happens to history’s forgotten people? How did a young Polish woman manage to spend years living in a Tanzanian village in the 1940s? Through this ambitious, highly personal film, Jonathan Durand exposes the tragic fate of nearly 1,000,000 Poles who were deported to Siberian labour camps during the Second World War, and the thousands of them who wound up in Africa after periods of exile in Iran and India. Featuring the unforgettable recollections of his own grandmother, meticulous historical research and a gripping personal quest, the film exposes a deliberately erased chapter of history, and questions the nature of identities rooted in exile. What happens to history’s forgotten people? How did a young Polish woman manage to spend years living in a Tanzanian village in the 1940s? Through this ambitious, highly personal film, Jonathan Durand exposes the tragic fate of nearly 1,000,000 Poles who were deported to Siberian labour camps during the Second World War, and the thousands of them who wound up in Africa after periods of exile in Iran and India. Featuring the unforgettable recollections of his own grandmother, meticulous historical research and a gripping personal quest, the film exposes a deliberately erased chapter of history, and questions the nature of identities rooted in exile. What happens to history’s forgotten people? How did a young Polish woman manage to spend years living in a Tanzanian village in the 1940s? Through this ambitious, highly personal film, Jonathan Durand exposes the tragic fate of nearly 1,000,000 Poles who were deported to Siberian labour camps during the Second World War, and the thousands of them who wound up in Africa after periods of exile in Iran and India. Featuring the unforgettable recollections of his own grandmother, meticulous historical research and a gripping personal quest, the film exposes a deliberately erased chapter of history, and questions the nature of identities rooted in exile. What happens to history’s forgotten people? How did a young Polish woman manage to spend years living in a Tanzanian village in the 1940s? Through this ambitious, highly personal film, Jonathan Durand exposes the tragic fate of nearly 1,000,000 Poles who were deported to Siberian labour camps during the Second World War, and the thousands of them who wound up in Africa after periods of exile in Iran and India. Featuring the unforgettable recollections of his own grandmother, meticulous historical research and a gripping personal quest, the film exposes a deliberately erased chapter of history, and questions the nature of identities rooted in exile.