Synopsis:

A rising star of Europe’s music scene and niece of Gustav Mahler, Alma Rosé is imprisoned at Auschwitz, where she leads a women’s orchestra performing for their captors to survive. Her music becomes a lifeline, saving over fifty lives though not her own. Told through survivors’ voices, descendants, and a seamless blend of animation and archival imagery, Alma Rosé is a haunting meditation on beauty and terror, courage and sacrifice, memory and survival.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

This film is about music, survival and the grey zone between memory and truth. The main thread is Alma’s story, her commitment to her craft as a professional musician; her will to survive and her commitment to create a professional orchestra at all costs, ultimately saving the lives of the women of the Auschwitz Orchestra.

But whereas it would be tempting to cast Alma in the heroic light of, say, Oskar Schindler, the story is never that clear. We will look at the inner dilemma Alma faced, or as the holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer once put it, her “choiceless choice”. Was Alma driven more by professional zeal? The will to survive? Compassion for others? Or a messy combination of all three? 

The survivors’ memories tease together the threads, challenging each other. From the image of Alma as just another ‘German’ who entertains the SS, to the image of Alma as someone who does everything she could to save their lives and keep her dignity. Were the Nazis using the women or were the women using the Nazis? 

Inspired by the words of Leonard Cohen.
- Francine Zuckerman, Director

Dance Me to the End of Love 
By Leonard Cohen

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love”

VIDEO TEASER

“Music takes you out into a different sphere. You get away from your horrible realities…You could lose yourself in music. Untouchable.”
- Anita Lasker Wallfisch, Survivor of Alma Rosé’s Auschwitz Women’s Orchestra

Team:

Producer/Director, (Canada) Francine Zuckerman and her company Z films inc. has produced a wide range of films and television programs with an emphasis on adaptation from fiction and theatre, social documentary and performing arts as well as short films. As writer, producer and director, Zuckerman has won numerous awards and her work has been recognized at film festivals around the world. Her first film, Half the Kingdom launched her career and since then she has made numerous films working in Canada, the US, UK, Poland, Germany, Israel and New Zealand.

Producer (France) A Canadian living in France, Sally Blake and her company Films à Cinq has worked both sides of the Atlantic as a creator and producer of documentary films and series for both television and the cinema. It all began with hunky heroes in pink tights, when Blake co-produced the international award-winning film: Hitman Hart: wrestling with shadows about the bizarre world of professional wrestling. Blake has produced, directed and edited scores of award-winning documentaries since then and continues to look for intriguing stories in unusual places. Her most recent film, “Revival 69: the concert that rocked the world” is premiering at the SXSW Festival in March 2023 and will be followed by an American cinematic release.