Mark Reviews Movies: I AM HERE

I Am Here, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 10, 2022

Ella Blumenthal was barely an adult when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. It's the weekend of her 98th birthday when director Jordy Sank follows and interviews the Holocaust survivor for I Am Here, and whenever she's on screen, there's a terrible sense of the impending loss of that direct connection to history and, just as important, all of the lessons we can—nay, must—take from it.

Ignorance or the outright rejection of history and those lessons is apparently the main reason Sank sought out Blumenthal. With the rise of far-right nationalist groups and literal (or not-so-secretive) neo-Nazis around the world, Blumenthal heard of one in South Africa, where she has lived almost her entire life following World War II. To this hateful man, she penned a letter, which was published in a newspaper, and it offered an invitation for conversation and love.

None of this story, unfortunately, matters to this documentary, except as an introduction to Blumenthal's generous spirit and embrace of hope. That tells us most of what we need to know about the woman as a human being, but the purpose of Sank's film is to allow Blumenthal the opportunity to tell her story of survival—one that she has kept to herself for almost eight decades.

Surrounded by her children and grandchildren and some friends, who have come from around the world to celebrate with her, Blumenthal details her happy childhood, the Nazi invasion, the establishment and destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. It all culminates in her imprisonment in at least three concentration and extermination camps during the war, with her niece—the only member of her family to survive.

Sank uses archival photographs and footage for the communication of general history, but less convincingly, the filmmaker also employs rudimentary animation to dramatize Blumenthal's harrowing personal experiences. The story is important enough to ignore the questionable way Sank visualizes it (A running motif involving butterflies—apparently invented by the director, since Blumenthal makes no reference to them, even as a metaphor—feels especially trivializing).

If Sank's technique creates an unfortunate distance from her subject's narrative, the returns to Blumenthal in the present day, telling this story to her family and friends, and the film's final section, which has the survivor directly relating how her experiences during the war have defined her life, are painfully, intimately honest. Blumenthal kept her history a secret from her children, for example, but even without knowing the specifics, her children state they knew on an unspoken level. It was the way their mother protected them, as well as the screams that would awaken them in the night.

Blumenthal's story is one of incredible survival—not only during invasion, occupation, and imprisonment, but also in making a life after those facts. I Am Here is particularly vital in acknowledging and examining that final, often overlooked part of the story.

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