Inspired by grandmother’s silence on Holocaust experience, former Great Neck resident to direct film

Adam Lidgett

Filmmaker, actor and Great Neck native Daniella Rabbani said she originally set out to make a film telling the story of her grandmother’s time in the Holocaust — the only problem was her grandmother never talked about it.

So instead, Rabbani said, she will tell the story of a character similar to herself who must interview an estranged grandmother about her experience in the Holocaust to finish her thesis on genocide and film studies,

“Having grown up in Great Neck with [Holocaust] survivors, I was exposed to these stories early on, but never of my own grandparents,” Rabbani said. “I’m one of many third generation survivors. We carry a responsibility to educate and inform and yet we don’t have the answers.”

Rabbani is set to direct the film, which is titled “Oma” — if the filmmakers can raise the money

As of Tuesday, the project had raised $11,332 of the $20,000 the filmmakers are looking to raise through the website Seed & Spark.

The film is written by Melissa Jane Osborne and produced by Mike Mayhurst.

Rabbani describes the film as a story of inherited trauma and secrets.

The original idea, she said, was to interview her 94-year-old grandmother, who now lives in an assisted living home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, But as the writing process moved forward, Rabbani said, there were too many gaps in her grandmother’s history to do a complete retelling of her life.

“There were too many roadblocks where we couldn’t actually base it on my grandmother,” Rabbani said. “So we did what artists do; we did our research and intuited a story on that.”

Still, her grandmother’s influence remains.

The woman portrayed in the script, Rabbani said, in many ways resembles her grandmother – tough, pretty and refined.

Rabbani said she still doesn’t know much about her grandmother’s early life.

She knows she was born in what is today Romania, and that she was a musician and linguist in her youth.

Her grandmother was also married to a man before she was interned and that the man died.

After she got out of the camps, Rabbani said, she married her grandfather.

“She had plans to take her talents as a young girl and take over the world,” Rabbani said. “What she always said is ‘Hitler had other plans for her.’”

But after that, Rabbani said, the story ends.

Her grandmother will always move onto another conversation, she said.

Rabbani does not know what camp her grandmother was in, nor how long she was there.

“I’ve travelled the world singing in Yiddish, I went to Hebrew school all my life; I know more about the old country and the Holocaust but I know nothing about my own family experience,” Rabbani said.

She said it is not uncommon for grandchildren and children of Holocaust survivors not to know much about their own family experience in the Holocaust, which is where museums and documentaries come into play to fill in the historical gaps.

“Oma,” however, will not be a documentary.

“I’m more interested in opening up a conversation from a sympathetic point of view rather than a historical point of view,” Rabbani said.

“Oma” is currently in preproduction, Rabbani said, with shooting scheduled to start in late August.

Actor Lynn Cohen, whose appeared in “Munich,” “Law & Order” and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” is set to portray the woman inspired by Rabbani’s grandmother — a woman who is not very open about her experiences in the Holocaust, which in turn affects her family dynamics.

Rabbani said she and her parents moved to Great Neck when she was seven-years-old, and she attended the North Shore Hebrew Academy.

Her parents, who have since moved back to Manhattan, wanted to raise her, her brother and her sister in the suburbs, she explained.

Rabbani said her interest in theater began early.

He first play, she said, was “Oliver” at the academy.

“I was in plays every year and it was an amazing experience,” Rabbani said. “I love making people laugh and I knew very early on that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

Rabbani said she has been performing professionally as an actor since graduating from New York University in 2007.

While she enjoys acting, she said, she said actors are at the mercy of a director to tell someone else’s story.

“Sometimes they are fantastic [stories], and a lot of the time they are, but they’re not always my own,” Rabbani said.

Rabbani said she looks up to women like Lena Dunham, creator of the HBO series “Girls,” and comedian Amy Schumer, who have both created their own careers.

“I look at these careers and thought what is my story?” Rabbani said.

“This story kept coming up; it’s not funny but it was mine,” Rabbani said of her grandmother’s Holocaust experience. “It’s always nagged me; not knowing what happened in the war, and feeling it’s trickle down effects of what I consider inherited trauma.”

Rabbani said she read an article about the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and how they are almost genetically modified from the trauma of the Holocaust.

The article, she said, told her that the trauma of the experience can change the stress hormones in a survivor’s body, which can change that person’s children and grandchildren’s reaction to stress.

“I wanted to fictionalize that experience and draw attention to it through art,” Rabbani said.

Rabbani said her grandmother knows she was the genesis of “Oma, and that she has been supportive of her work throughout her career.  

“I ended up getting to know who my grandma is as a person, which is much more healing than any testimonial could be,” Rabbani said. “It could actually serve the community in a way with its unanswered questions.”

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