Three old photographs of three different people: Wera, Marcel, and Tonia. When Wera was eleven and Marcel nine, their mother Tonia was jailed over accusations of harming the state of Poland. It was 1949. The children were sent to an orphanage in Wrocław. Stepping into their new home they were asked: ‘who are you?’ and replied truthfully: ‘we are children of communists’. In return, the woman who asked yelled: ‘why do they only send us Judeo-communists (pol. żydokomuna)’. Tonia Lechtman, a pre-war communist, was charged with collaborating with American intelligence services and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Through the long period of her incarceration, the state was to take care of her children. The director talks about the protagonists in an interview for Polskie Radio Program III (conducted by Ryszard Jaźwiński, ‘Trójkowo, Filmowo’, 28.4.2011):
It is a film about the price my generation had to pay for the ideological choices of our parents. In this case, the choice of being communists. It is something completely different to be a pre-war communist and a member of the communist party after the war. I described the tragic fate of a mother who was dedicated to the idea of communism and equality from her youth. She spent some time in prison in Łódź before the war, then in Palestine and France but the worst time was the 1949-1955 period when she was imprisoned as an American spy.
When asked for an interview in PAP Life (‘Marcel Łoziński: Ludzie Mają Dość Bajek’, 2.2.2011) the director adds:
It echoes my family life and childhood in a way. My parents were communists.
In Tonia and Her Children the fates of the Lechtman and Łoziński families are crossed. The director was, like Tonia and her children, born in Paris and raised in Warsaw, where he was friends with Marcel Lechtman, a street gang ringleader who taught the young artist to respond to attacks. Marcel Łoziński talks about this time in the following manner:
As a boy being raised in the Czerniaków district in Warsaw I got beaten several times for being Jew. I had curly hair, I was dark, and I did not go to church. I was recognized immediately and bam! (Sebastian Łupak, ‘Jesteśmy Dziećmi Komunistów [Wprost: 17/2011], 74)
An earlier memory: when the French authorities turn Jews in the hands of the Gestapo, Wera’s and Marcel’s father ended up in Auschwitz. The director states:
My father had more luck and managed to escape the camp. Together with my mother, they fought in the French resistance, whereas I got into an orphanage just like you.
Later on, his mother, an employee of the Polish embassy in Paris, helped the Lechtman family to get back to Poland.
Tonia and Her Children is an ascetic and contemplative documentary which lacks differentiated forms of expression and sophisticated stylistic figures. However, the static frames are filled with emotions that are sometimes hard to face. I believe that this film is one of the most touching Polish documentaries. Wera, Marcel and the director sit at a table. The siblings read the protocols of her mother’s interrogations and the letters written by her out loud and hum her favourite lullaby: ‘lay your head on your knees / hug your hands and squint your eyes / the worker’s child sleeps / and has black bread dreams’. Łoziński listens, sometimes interposes or poses a question. He shows his friends a fragment of his film about three women, including his mother, sitting in the same cell for a few years. He already wanted to shoot the short film Three Women in film school in Łódź. ‘We were not allowed to finish it back then’ states the director. Tonia and Her Children seems to be the long-awaited end of the idea from the past. The film ends with the frame: ‘Wera, in Tel Aviv since 1968; Marcel, in Stockholm since 1968; Tonia, in Tel Aviv since 1968 (died in 1996)’.
Tadeusz Sobolewski accurately noticed in the article ‘Ostatnie Słowo Marcela Łozińskiego’ (Gazeta Wyborcza, 90/2011, 16):
On the one hand Tonia and Her Children denudes its own protagonists and touches the most sensitive points of their consciousness. On the other hand the director does whatever he can to avoid the role of investigator. He sits with his protagonists at a table. He is a part of the same drama, a child of the same tragedy. Łoziński battles the inner resistance and states out loud for the first time in his film: my story is similar.
The jury of the 51st Kraków Film Festival honoured the director with Złoty Lajkonik for ‘creating a piece of art that joins the best traditions of Polish documentaries with intellectual courage and critical sharpness’. A few months earlier Mikołaj, Marcel’s son, looked at his family with a critical eye in his extraordinary book titled ‘A Book’. Father of the narrator states there: ‘Son, you have become dangerous. Some things have to stay within the family’.
- Tonia and Her Children, Poland 2011. Dir.: Marcel Łoziński. Script: Marcel Łoziński. Cooperation: Anna Bikont. Cinematography: Jacek Petrycki, Magdalena Kowalczyk, Paweł Łoziński. Montage: Przemysław Chruścielewski. Music: Maria Bikont. Music consultation: Małgorzata Jaworska. Sound: Sławomir Szatkowski, Iwo Klimek. Producer: Barbara Ławska, Kamil Dobrosielski. Production: Kronika Film Studio (together with the Polish Film Institute). Black and white, 57 min.
Prizes:
- Złoty Lajkonik Grand Prix at the 51st Kraków Film Festival, 2011;
- Nagroda Prezesa Telewizji Polskiej SA for the best directing at the 51st Kraków Film Festival, 2011;
- Bronisław Chromy’s sculpture for the best producer from the Kronika Film Studio at the 51st Kraków Film Festival, 2011;
- Złote Grono for the best documentary film at the 40th Lubuskie Lato Filmowe in Łagów, 2011.
Author: Jerzy Armata, December 2011, translated by Antoni Wiśniewski, April 2016.