Freedom fighter, spy, femme fatale: Twenty years after her mother’s death, journalist Marisa Fox uncovers that her mother’s stories of her Holocaust experience were stunningly untrue. After unearthing a secret journal, Fox begins a deeply personal investigation that uncovers a hidden past more complex—and haunting—than she ever imagined. It connects her mother to a network of women whom Fox tracks down. After 80 years of silence, deflection and denial, they reveal their shocking story of Nazi trafficking, sexual violence and extraordinary resilience as teenage prisoners. Fox’s breathtaking directorial debut unfolds like a detective story, weaving riveting testimonies, archival discoveries, striking animation and vérité filmmaking and affording her mother the opportunity to tell a story she never did. As a journalist, Fox also ensures that the transgressions of the past—misogyny and antisemitism—are imperative to understanding challenges to global democracy today.
A moving work of remembrance and reckoning, MY UNDERGROUND MOTHER confronts the postwar silences and reinventions that shaped generations, while offering a profound meditation on memory, survival and the complex inheritance between mothers and daughters.
Director Bio: View on IMDB
Marisa Fox is a veteran journalist and first-time filmmaker whose work spans print, broadcast and digital platforms. She has produced award-winning stories and social impact campaigns for Hearst, Time Inc. and written for outlets including The New York Times, CNN, Ms., The Forward and Haaretz.
Guest: Director Marisa Fox
Sponsors: Miller Nash LLC, Julie and Rabbi Jim Mirel
