Leah Galant’s slippery and sobering documentary Landscapes of Memory begins with two things: her father, and her pending move to Germany, where she intends to study Holocaust memory. Her dad, Allen, is the primary keeper of their family’s history; his parents— Galant’s grandparents— were Holocaust survivors, and few physical documents of their past remain. The passage of that history to the next generation is complicated by Allen’s ALS diagnosis. His physical decline throughout Landscapes of Memory is steep, but he is eventually able to continue talking— and sharing the stories that only he knows— via a text-to-speech computer program. He may have lost his ability to speak, but he never lost his voice.
Galant’s film is pointedly about the present more than it is about the past, however. She moved to Germany in 2021, and her footage from Berlin communicates how the present-day city— known for its vibrant nightlife— exists in constant conversation with its past. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe sits adjacent to the Tiergarten and just south of Brandenburg Gate, its maze of gray columns rising and falling like waves in the midst of one of the city’s most touristy areas. A group bicycle tour rolls somewhat disinterestedly past the memorial to burned books. Brass bricks interspersed are emblazoned with the names of Jewish citizens who fled or were killed. These remembrances of Nazi atrocities and their victims are quite literally built into the landscape, which Galant observes with meditative imagery against which plays audio of calls from her father, or her own personal observations of her experiences as she wrestles with her Jewish identity, calling into question the true aim of the memorials being erected across the country.
Galant further broadens the perspective of her film by tracking a few other third-generation descendants with different family histories. Eli’s great-grandfather was arrested and detained in a concentration camp; he engages with his history through art, creating animations and charcoal drawings that build a bridge from the present to the past, even as his methods of and reasonings for processing the trauma rub up against his photographer father Gideon’s different ideas. Johannes, a historian who also helps others investigate their families, grapples with the discovery that one of his relatives was a Nazi, as he parses through the SS medals found in his grandparents’ belongings, and a document from his grandfather describing Jews being murdered with gas wagons— indefatigable proof that Johannes was lied to when his grandfather told him he had no idea what was happening at the time. Michael is a Palestinian artist living in Germany, who makes murals illustrating his experiences with German officials; as a Palestinian, he says, he is typically viewed as being antisemitic by default. This departure from the personal somewhat handicaps the film (although Galant and her father’s intermittent narration serves as the through-line that works to tie it all together), but it also ably conveys the breadth of experiences across different age groups and nationalities, and ways of remembering.
Landscapes of Memory shifts gears following the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched the attack that resulted in the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip that produced an ongoing mass genocide of Palestinians. While filming a pro-Palestine demonstration in Germany, Galant is arrested and charged with antisemitism, and Landscapes of Memory pivots away from its examination of alternative methods of remembrance and the ripple effects of the past on the present toward a provocative third-act reckoning with the ways that memory is more often weaponized than learned from. This is particularly relevant to the current Israel-Palestine conflict, where— as Galant states— being pro-Palestinian has become equated with being antisemitic, and far-right forces employ Holocaust memory as a means to their ends. Landscapes of Memory exhumes a lot of issues that can’t be resolved in one film, and poses a lot of questions it can’t conceivably answer. The lack of any sort of grand epiphany or effective cohesion among its many moving pieces may frustrate some viewers searching for some more conclusive or incendiary analysis. But it’s in the abuse of the concept of creating a legacy through action— an act that Galant attempts to accomplish with her film, throughout which her father’s stories are tenderly woven— that Landscapes of Memory finds its most pointed critique. The film’s jarringly abrupt final note lingers long after the credits finish rolling, as Galant poses a somber question: “If our memories don’t change us, what’s the point of remembering?”
Landscapes of Memory had its world premiere at the 2026 True/False Film Fest. Runtime: 78 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 