Martin(1999)

Overview

The controversial story of Martin Zaidenstadt, an 87 year old Dachau KZ survivor that remained to live his life in the adjacent town. It is a strange and fickle story of a conflict between this man and his environment, spun out through the experiences of three young tourists who came for a routine day trip to a KZ memorial and found more then they expected. The film takes place in the "back-stage" of a concentration camp memorial, and on the "backdrop" of the town of Dachau. A town forever marked by its name and desperately attempting to change its image in the eyes of the world. The subjective tourist point of view, and the accidental manner in which Martin's story, opens the film to basic questions about the relationship between memory and commemoration, about the construction of historical truth, and about the connection between the third generation and the Holocaust.