Absent

The smalltown of Marculesti, in Moldova, was one of the many European cities devasted by the World War II with the killings of hundreds of people, specially of Jewsish descent. Yet, in this particular case and place, it's a little known story around the world and hardly ever discussed, even by its local population.

Slowly, the docuentary builds a case as to why such story is almost washed away in the Marculesti community.

Matthew Mishory's "Absent" is a conflicting piece on the issue as it tries to find answers and find the truth about the Marculesti massacre. The writer/director is the first member of his family to return to his parents homeland, who fled before the war, and he asks to the local people of all ages what do they know about the massacre, the reasons for it, the houses where they live nowadays (obvious that there's a great deal about those constructions and to whom they previously belong to), and he tries to discover what really happened there.

It's a difficult task for Mishory and his crew since they're dealing with either elder people who don't like or don't want to talk about the war, and/or their memories aren't so well collected; and we also have interviews with teenagers who are asked if they know about those stories and if they're learning it on school. And Marculesti is a town trapped and lost in time whose only interest in going forward comes when it's all about avoiding the talk of war, and that makes it all too difficult for us because on one end we have the old people who try hard to ignore what had happened and they won't teach newer generations about it, hence why we see the teens being very unfamiliar about everything, mostly dealing with rumours. And it gets even weirder with the testimony of a peasant/historian who wants to write a book about the topic but the man even questions verified facts.

However, it's not all hopeless. The friendly city mayor helps the film crew with plenty of interviews and to find witnesses of the tragic events, being the most interesting moment of the film an old lady who shares plenty of stories. Apart from her, it's a great deal of conjectures and confusing facts. And Mishroy's film can be problematic to those who want to see historical registers and more solid data rather than just a contemporary visit to a place where almost no one goes (but I was interested in that, it's such a desolate place, almost like a ghost town that one wonders why people live there when they don't have industries or jobs to keep going). It'd be interesting if a survivor could be reached out, even if the person was living elsewhere because it'd be a more concrete testimony than everything we had here.

On a final analysis, the objective was to not let this tragic story die down and disappear from the records and because of that we have a commendable job. Maybe in the future someone can track down the Romanian registers, bring some historians forward and make a companion film to this piece. In the meantime, this is the best we can get. 6/10.