French actress Helene Lapiower steps on the other side of the camera to shoot this intimate documentary about her working-class Jewish family who immigrated to France from Poland decades ago. Originally intending to preser... more »ve images of her family s background and culture, which was slowly slipping away, she began a seven-year odyssey that yielded so much more.
A Little Family Conversation is a complex portrait of a multi-generational Jewish family. While most of her family members still consider themselves Jewish, the younger offspring are no longer religious, with many marrying outside the faith and culture. Thus, conversation in this film is much more than passing down old family stories from the past. It addresses a series of issues about identity: At what point do younger generations of Jews become affected by the weight of history, and should they? And, did the sense of tolerance for other cultures that was passed down in some families lead to the breakdown of Jewish identity?
Lapiower s poignant film centers around the rips and tears within a Jewish family that is haunted by the question of identity.« less