“At a time when the world’s remaining Holocaust survivors are reaching the end of their years, Papirosen poses an important question: how, and how much, does the psychological residue manifest itself?” (Film Comment)

Gastón Solnicki’s tour-de-force documentary portrait of four generations of his wildly volatile Jewish-Argentine family—culled from almost 200 hours of 8mm home videos, a VHS bar mitzvah, and original observational material—takes home movies to an entirely new level. His father, Victor, a debonair, successful businessman emerges as the lead figure, but Solnicki highlights the entire clan. Pola, his grandmother, escaped from Poland and the Nazis as a teenager and now spiritedly takes sides in family squabbles. His eternally unhappy sister shops too much and has marital problems (which Victor describes as “an endless wake”), and an overwhelmed brother announces his intention to withdraw from his kin’s “constant pressure.” Simultaneously epic and intimate, Papirosen is an extraordinary meditation on family, history, the importance of storytelling, and the power of cinema itself.