BLACK SUGAR RED BLOOD

Anna... She doesn't know if that's her real name. Because apart from the vague memory of the sound of this name, she only associates one thing with her early childhood: horrible fear. Of doctors, of injections and the bitter-sweet taste of a piece of sugar on liberation day. Anna Strishkowa is a toddler when she stands on the ramp of Auschwitz on 4 December 1943. She neither knows the names of her parents nor where she was born. For Luigi Toscano, Anna Strishkowa is the first Auschwitz survivor he portrays for the exhibition of his project "Against Forgetting" in Kyiv. He has photographed more than 500 other survivors since then, but Anna's fate never lets him go. Luigi wants to help Anna decipher her identity. But shortly before filming begins, Putin invades Ukraine. The bombs falling on Kiev catapult Anna back to the horror of her childhood. Luigi offers to bring her from Kyiv to Mannheim. But Anna refuses. Hitler robbed her of her identity, and she doesn't want to let Putin take her home away from her. There is confirmation of Anna's prisoner tattoo, that she was registered in Auschwitz. But further research came to nothing. The adoptive father had the tattoo removed shortly before Anna started school. To protect her, Anna believes. A Soviet propaganda film showing Anna shortly after liberation raises doubts about the previously assumed prisoner number. Against all expectations, Luigi discovers the decisive clue in a yellowed medical file in the Auschwitz archive. The new clues point to relatives who are still alive. They lead from Auschwitz to Belarus, from the Potulice-Lebrechtsdorf camp to Kyiv and Drohobytsch, all the way to Unna in North Rhine-Westphalia. Anna's search links the darkest chapter of the twentieth century with our own history: How much do we need to understand the past in order to understand our present?