(SHOWcase) Matthew Mishory's ABSENT!

Filmmaker Matthew Mishory's (Joshua Tree, 1951) father (and generations of his family) were born in the Jewish agricultural village of Mărculeşti in north-eastern Romania, now a part of the independent state of Moldova. Matthew's father fled Romania with his parents as a small child, three years before Kristallnacht. Others were not so lucky; the village and its inhabitants were destroyed in the Holocaust. In the decades since, the region itself has withered under years of Soviet neglect and Moldovan poverty. In the fall of 2013, Matthew will become the first member of his family to return in over 75 years. Working with renowned cinematographer Michael Marius Pessah, Romanian producer Sabin Dorohoi, and a very small crew, he will document the last remaining vestiges of Jewish Mărculeşti (an ancient crumbling cemetery, an unmarked mass grave), meet the region's few current inhabitants, and capture the profound absence of a once-thriving community and way of life. A beautifully photographed, contemplative, and essential step toward reconciliation with the past, the film will also serve as a subtle but timely reminder -- as xenophobia again surges on the Continent and in the United States.