Two generations after the Holocaust, its aftermath has faded, but the small, seemingly banal moments of everyday life are still present. Through interviews with strangers and intimates, as well as views of contemporary Berlin, filmmaker Alexa Karolinski investigates how history reverberates through the everyday. The film is an autobiography just as much as it is a portrait of a city and a testimony to the complexity of trauma—as collective, inherited, and embodied. Deliberately paced, Signs of Life gives the viewer space to experience their own “signs of life.”

Directed by Alexa Karolinski
Germany, 2018
Documentary, World War II, Jewish History
German (with English subtitles)
84 minutes