Review by Suzie Toumeh
Trigger Warnings from Reviewer?
persecution, war, and parental separation.
Age Recommendation from Reviewer?
13+
Reviewer recommends it for…
Lovers of cinematic poetry, students of history
📖 Plot Summary
Nesjomme is a haunting hybrid documentary that resurrects the vibrant Jewish Amsterdam of the interwar years. Through a fictional series of letters from a young woman, Rusha, to her brother in what is modern day Indonisea, the film animates a wealth of archival footage. We witness Rusha grow up, fall in love, build a family, and engage in socialist politics, all within a community that is at once proudly Jewish and thoroughly Amsterdammer. The film’s profound tragedy lies in tracing how this hyphenated identity is systematically stripped away, leading to the Holocaust's unspeakable horizon. The final, heartbreaking switch in the voiceover to a letter from her brother adressed to her daughter in 1957 transforms the film to show us Rusha's memory and legacy.
📖 In This Review
0. The Core of the Film
The core of this film aims to answer how do you remember a world that was deliberately erased? Nesjomme is a film of remembrance that uses the fictional voice of one woman to breathe life back into a thousand fragments of archived silent film.The film uses the fictional voice of one woman to breathe life back into a thousand fragments of archived, silent film.
1. The Journey
The journey of Rusha is told to us through voiceover of the letters she writes to her brother who left to what is today modern day Indonisia. She updates him on her life, and plays a chess game with him through writing her next move at the end of each letter. At the start, her letters reveal a young woman in a city rebuilding from one war, blissfully unaware of the next. She navigates the pull of her personal ambitions in her secular life and the communal belonging found in her Jewish identity. Her major call is love, in the form of Sallie, with whom she wants to build a home and a family. She answers this with her whole heart, and her letters become a map of a life built of marriage, friendship, and work. But the world outside changes as the tone of the letters shifts. The war starts and her daughter Sarah is born in 1941. The hopeful tone becomes a desperate siren as Rusha stops writing her next chess move at the end of her letters. The final letter she sends is the one in which Rusha makes her ultimate choice for her daughter. She gives her child away to save her as she heads to a platform that will take her away. In the end, the unfinished chess game that Rusha had to pause signals the interrupted life of so many.
“The unfinished chess game that Rusha had to pause signals the interrupted life of so many.”
2. Directing
In this filn, the directing masterstroke is constraint. The film allows itself only the basics of what existed. No sets, no actors. The film shines through this curatorship and emotional guidance. For example, in a sequence where Rusha and Sallie get engaged. The film splices together random faces beaming with joy. There is no classic "engagment shot." And yet, through the joyful, frantic montage and the voiceover you feel the celebration, the chaos, the love. You become a guest at that engagement.
The feeling it creates is one of beautiful, ghostliness.
The film’s masterclass lesson here is about the power of suggestion and the audience’s collaboration. The archive provides the authentic images while the audiance provides the empathy to fuse them into a living memory.
In an age of efficiency and simplification, Nesjomme cares deeply about memory, and complexity. It cares about the soul that existed before any victimhood. It cares about how people lived, their arguments, their jokes, their bad jobs, their great loves. It is essential viewing because it fights the second erasure: the erasure of a full humanity, reduced to a statistic of loss.
3. Cinematography and Editing
The footage of a century ago is, as expected, full of sudden jumps and fleeting glances. However, the editing is where the film’s heartbeat is found. The rhythm is frantic at times, five-second shots of street scenes, children playing and the bustling city life. Then, the calm canals, a room, the solemn face of someone. This push-and-pull creates a sensation of life rushing by, with moments of profound stillness where history and emotion settle heavily upon you.4. Sound
There is no dramatic score. The most important voice over as it is your companion throughout the movie and the main anchor for a lot of the information. The amount of attention that is put into the script and the way the information is delivered through it makes the movie almost comparable to an audiobook. The voice over was very well done and the relationship achived with Rusha through her voice over letters and suggestive images on screen make the silence after her last letter brutal, and the feeling is one of chilling dread.5. Conclusion: What Stays After?
Nesjomme confirms that to remember well is to imagine with love... to piece together a soul from the fragments left behind. The gift of this film is a dual one: it immerses you in the vibrant, lost world of pre-war Jewish Amsterdam, and in doing so, it makes you a witness. It transfers the duty of memory. Long after the credits, you will hear the waves, see those faces in the crowd, and hold the weight of Rusha’s choice.
Reviewer: Suzie Toumeh
Suzie holds two Master’s degrees: in Media Studies from Utrecht University and English Studies from the University of Szeged. She has served on two film festival juries, including the prestigious European University Film Award.💡 Want More Deep Dives on Film & Art?
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