When Day Breaks (破曉時光)

My 14th film at the HKIFF is another film which I like enormously. It's a film about a professor of music. We see him giving a last rehearsal to a choir which he had spent years building up. Then we see the arrival of a much younger lady who would take it over from him. They greeted each other, the new lady thanked him for all that he had done and then promised to continue his work. He went home. We see him training a young violinist in his early teens whose brother, one of his former students whom he trained for free had already gone on to the local musical academy at Belgrade. Then he got a telephone asking him to go to Jewish synagogue saying that they have something for him. He went and was given a box inside which was a yellowing black and white photograph of his parents with a young child and a half finished musical score entitled "When the Day Breaks" signed Isaac Weiss. He asked what it had to do with him and was told then he was not what he thought he was  ie. the son of a Christian family called the Brankovs and that his real name was Misha Weiss, not Misha Brankov and that he was given away to his father's friend the Brankov in 1941, when he was barely 2-yea old just before his parents, Serbian Jews, were led into a a truck, called "soul suckers", where unbeknown to its occupants, they would be asphyxiated with poison gas by Nazi Germans and that his father was buried in a mass grave at what used to be the Belgrade Fairground, which was the site of the International Fair there in 1937 with its modernist buildings etc and the pride of Belgrade at the time, later turned into the Semlin Judenlager concentration camp with the arrival of the Nazi Germans but now a deserted and overgrown wasteland about to be resumed by the Government to be turned into a new commercial plaza and that in the course of building works, the workers found that box. He was told that his father was the most well known violinist in Belgrade at that time, just before he died. He could not believe it but was given some names which might help him ascertain what he was told. He checked them out with one of the survivors.  He went on to pay a visit to the Brankovs. His half brother confirmed the same in front of his foster father's grave.

Misha Weiss (Brankov) was told that on 8th December, a memorial service for the dead would be held at the site of that mass grave. He promised the rabbi that on that day, he would bring in the best musicians in Belgrade and that there'd be thousands who would hear a new composition in memory of those who died at that former site of the concentration camp. He visited site and discovered an old water tower which looked exactly like the one in the photograph. Some of the abandoned pavilion houses are now occupied by Rumanian squatters. He went to the former address of his parents. The house was now occupied by a young Rumanian couple with a baby, also squatters and was told to get off because he was not going to have it back. He set about to fulfill his promise. He went first to his former choir but heard the new musical director had switched it some rhythmic rock music but in any event had already made prior concert engagements on that day. He then went to the music Academy to look for his son and asked him to help. His son told him he was busy rehearsing for another new concert and really did not have time that even if he were to help, his musicians would have to be paid. After much soul searching, the professor finally decided to sell his good quality piano, only to be told when he returned to his son that that time slot had already been taken. He then went to the countryside to seek out the best tenor that he knew . He was told that he hadn't sang for the past 20 years and that he could not sleep without a bottle of cognac a day. His friend at first refused but agreed after he begged him.

The day of the memorial service arrived. The crowd gathered, barely 20 odd people, including the rabbi. It was time for the singing. His orchestra consisted of just a group of musician with one violin, one accordion, some drums, those who performed at the wedding of his former student. But his two violin students came, his current student and his elder brother. His singer friend came but he could not sing. He had lost his voice despite taking another drink just before he was about to begin. They played the composition his father half wrote and he completed. The film ends.

This 2012 film Kad Svane Dan or When the Day Breaks, by the Serbain director Goran Paskaljevic about this forgotten episode lost amongst the millions of tales of the Holocaust was superbly shot, principally with a yellowish hue and with not too sharp outlines ( like something from old photograph albums). It has everything: restraint and sensitive acting by the leading actor Mustafa Nadarevic as the retired music professor, static but atmospheric camera work by Milan Spasic which fits the mood of something frozen in time and has a very haunting melody. There is only one dream sequence: when Misha dreamt of how when the names of his father and mother Isaac Weiss and Sarah Weiss were called out, the search light of the German soldiers blinded him so that everything within sight turned into a numbing whiteness. But 50 years after it happened, hardly any one cared. But there are still a few. As the professor said, it was as if his father had deliberately left the very sad and yet hopeful music half finished, waiting for it to be completed by his son. If so, it was. And as a result, we have this very moving film. It's a bleak tale meticulously and ponderously told, without sentimental embellishment or any explicit moral commentary, a perfect blend of images and music.