The Making of ‘A Prayer for My Mother: The Eva Brettler Story’

Creating “A Prayer for My Mother: The Eva Brettler Story'' in collaboration with other members of The Righteous Conversations Project (RCP) cultivated my love for animation and opened me up to the infinite possibilities of Animated Documentaries. I remain passionate about these subjects today, as a student majoring in Animation and Digital Arts at USC. I’m extremely lucky to have been making films at The RCP for the past four years; my first experience was contributing to “A Ship Called Lili: the Lillian Trilling Story” in 2020, a unique challenge, as we made it entirely over zoom, animating at our desks. After being a part of The RCP asynchronously, I was eager to collaborate on a film in person. I had grown accustomed to animating on my own and was excited for a change. This was not, however, my primary motivation for remaining involved in The RCP; The importance of connecting with Holocaust survivors did not escape me. Gen X will be the last generation with the chance to talk with survivors directly. Although future generations will, hopefully, study the Holocaust in history class, learning about the facts and statistics is incomparable to sitting down with survivors and hearing their experiences first hand.

In the wake of growing Holocaust denial, these connections become all the more important. For this reason, among many others, I am honored to have helped amplify Eva Brettler’s voice in “A Prayer for my Mother: The Eva Brettler Story,” a synthesis of Eva’s narration and student-made animation. The film was animated and directed through the collaborative efforts of myself, Eve Levy, and 12 other teenagers: Ruben Barrett, Raisa Effress, Sophia Evans, Lauren Fuchs, Katie Hadsock-Longarzo, Ian Kim, Timothy Lim, Asher Meron, Marion Ochoa, Isabella Rahi, Hank Schoen, and Olivia Uzielli. We worked under the guidance of C. Lily Ericson, who helped us cultivate our artistic skills and consolidate our many visions, and Cheri Gaulke and Samara Hutman, who brought us together and lead and co-founded the RCP.

We created the film to help Eva tell her story with the accompaniment of visuals that are evocative of the emotional reality of her experiences. The film expresses the connection between us students and Eva, our inter-student relationships, and our artistic individuality without detracting from Eva’s testimony. In fact, I hold that the traces of our process visible in the film’s artwork only aid Eva’s voice; as teenagers, we were all similar in age, though all older, than Eva was when her life was upended by the Nazi takeover of Hungary. Thus, our art brings Eva’s youth, as well as her emotional lens, to the forefront of the film. “A Prayer for My Mother” is a uniquely process-oriented work; Including the recording of Eva Brettler’s testimony, we created the film in only 2 weeks. Our creative process was intertwined with conversations with each other reflecting on what Eva had told us, and conversations with Eva herself as she stopped by to watch us work.

We all first got to know Eva as she told us her story. Personally, I felt that I formed a deeper connection with her when she watched us animate. As Eva watched me study her childhood pictures, we talked about our cultural experiences, her being a Hungarian Jew and me being an Iranian Jew. Following this path, we soon found that we knew multiple of the same people and had even been in the same room before. Even more shockingly, when she told me that she helped get thousands of Jewish children out of Iran during the 1979 revolution, I realized that she had done so in collaboration with my grandfather. As soon as this connection was made Eva treated me like a member of her own family; She held my hands or my side for the rest of the day, whispering quips in my ear that I had to restrain myself from reaction to while trying to draw her portrait. Two years later, she even sat shiva with my family in a difficult time.

I can say with full conviction that Eva changed the way that I navigate my life: I have left every one of our conversations with a new understanding of what it means to feel love, to feel pain, to be present, to be a Jew, a woman, and, above all, to be alive. There are few people who see the world as clearly as her and who, like her, can command a room without saying a word. Her personality is difficult to describe, as she exudes qualities that I used to think exist in opposition with one another: She talks with an air of stoicism but often surprises you with quick jabs of irreverent humor, she skips over small-talk and other niceties just to listen to you deeply, she firmly holds your hand while making soft circles with her thumb, and, most notably, she unapologetically and bluntly expresses her opinions but always remains respectful. One instance from the making of her film comes to mind: Surveying our drawings, Eva was quick to tell us, “that doesn’t look like my old kitchen,” or “that doesn’t look like my hometown,” always followed by a vivid description to help us reconstruct important places as best we could. In summation, Eva always manages to be both bold and graceful. I aim to approach the world with the gratitude and confidence that she exudes every day.

You can watch A Prayer for My Mother: The Eva Brettler Story, here.