The Flat

Arnon Goldfinger’s home movie about cleaning out his German-Jewish grandmother’s Tel Aviv apartment ballooned into this interesting documentary about his grandparent’s relationship with a prominent Nazi before and after the Holocaust. This is one of those “first-person documentaries” which often ring so false to me, but this one works quite well because Goldfinger resists many of the temptations lesser personal documentarians give into. Though this film is basically about himself and his attempts to learn truths about the past, Goldfinger keeps the focus of his film off of himself and squarely on the subject he is researching – a subject that is complicated, disturbing, and ultimately unknowable.