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Germany, Israel, Canada · 2016
1h 35m
Director Shaul Schwarz
Starring
Genre Documentary
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Family secrets, lies, drama and generations of history unspool in this international documentary, beginning with World War II and concluding with a 21st-century family reunion. Izak was born inside the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp in 1945 and sent for adoption in Israel. Secret details of his birth mother, an unknown brother in Canada and his father's true identity slowly emerge.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
The debut doc is an ambitious attempt to get to the root of a tangled family tree, but the directors' close relationship to Izak (he's their uncle) means they sometimes pay so much attention to the genealogical minutiae that a viewer checks in and out to clear her head.
Arizona Republic by Bill Goodykoontz
Aida's Secrets starts out as a fairly straightforward documentary about reuniting two long-separated brothers, but directors Alon and Shaul Schwarz don't stop there.
The New York Times by Daniel M. Gold
In this time of mass displacement across the globe, it is a stark reminder of how traumatic the refugee experience often is.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Aida's Secrets unravels its complex scenario in compelling, page-turner mystery fashion, proving yet again that truth can be much stranger than fiction.
Los Angeles Times by Sheri Linden
Aida’s Secrets movingly embodies the traumas that, at war’s end and long after, are inseparable from liberation.
She is Amina and she fears nobody.