By Shelley A. Sackett

On Sept. 20, the 41st Boston Film Festival will host the world premiere of “Hidden: The Kati Preston Story.” The 75-minute film is a powerful docudrama that follows the extraordinary journey of 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Kati Preston. Exceptionally well-edited, directed and produced, it retells the story of one person’s resilience and survival in the face of a society descending into antisemitism, authoritarianism, dictatorship and tyranny.

The film opens on a bucolic country scene with a horse peacefully grazing near a white clapboard house. Smoke spirals invitingly from its chimney. Inside, a woman sits at her desk, turning the pages of a scrapbook of sepia-toned family photos. “Everybody here is dead. I’m the only one left,” says Kati Preston. “It feels so strange because I feel like I’m in exile. The world I come from is gone. When I die, nobody will remember these people because I’m the last person who bears witness.”

Seamlessly, the screen melts into 43 seconds of black-and-white archival footage that shows Jews living openly Jewish lives followed quickly by scenes of them being rounded up, transported, beaten and murdered. The last shot is of crematoria ovens, doors wide open, displaying their interiors of ashen, bony remains. Mercifully short, these devastating images are a reminder of the lightning speed and crusading evil that are the backdrops to Kati’s story.

Based on Kati’s award-winning graphic novel, “HIDDEN: The True Story of the Holocaust,” the film is narrated by Kati and features reenactments of her story. In 1943, her hometown of Nagyárad, Hungary (now Oradea, Romania) boasted a thriving Jewish community with synagogues, a Jewish hospital, Jewish schools and Jewish coffee houses. Despite a diverse society that welcomed religious Jews, Roma and Muslims, Jews remained insulated, not wanting to assimilate.

Kati’s childhood was one of luxury. Her mother ran a dressmaking business with 40 employees and her father was a carp wholesaler. At 5 years old, she was beautifully dressed, wore curlers to bed every night and enjoyed the comforts of maid and governess. Her father was Jewish, her mother a Catholic who converted. Although they were secular Jews, Kati remembers her mother lighting Shabbat candles every Friday night.

She also remembers going to the opera on Sundays with her Catholic grandmother. Those outings routinely ended with the two of them sitting at a bar and her grandmother slugging down shot after shot until she was drunk.

Kati’s father was playful and happy-go-lucky. Her mother, whom Kati feared and loved but “did not like,” was more in control and controlling. To make sure Kati was trained to be a proper young lady, she hired Fraulein, who “terrified children into behaving instead of educating them.” One tool in Fraulein’s toolbox was her book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which was used to teach German children the dangers of misbehavior through traumatic stories. These included a child having his thumbs cut off for thumb-sucking and a girl who burns to death for playing with matches.

Interspersed among the narrative reenactments are interviews with Tom White (Holocaust and genocide educator), Dr. Martin Rumscheidt (Christian minister, educator, author and theologian), Annette Tilleman Lantos (Holocaust survivor from Budapest), Rabbi Oberlander Baruch (Chief of the Budapest Orthodox Rabbinate) and Kati’s son Daniel Mator, who directed “Hidden.” His six-year collaboration with filmmaker Jody Glover and determination to trace his family roots are responsible for Kati’s story being brought to life.

Inserting talking heads into a docudrama can be risky. If clumsily done, these can interrupt rather than augment, breaking the mood and boring the audience. Director Mator and his team avoid this common pitfall, masterfully using these commentators to supplement the interviews with eye witness accounts and historical context. In particular, Mator’s on-the-ground guided narration of life and lives in the Jewish ghetto in the 1940s feels more like an immersion experience than a lecture, thanks to his use of animated maps and archives.

Things go from bad to worse for Kati and her mother after Hitler invades Hungary. Her mother sews the mandatory yellow star onto Kati’s coat, which she proudly wears until a man sees it and spits on her. “I couldn’t understand why I had to wear a star that would make someone spit on me,” Kati says of her first encounter with antisemitism.

A Hungarian farmer woman who feels beholden to Kati’s mother agrees to hide Kati in her barn. Miraculously, she avoids detection until she can be reunited with her mother. The defeat of the Nazis brings Russian occupation and a different set of perils, as those soldiers rape, pillage and murder with impunity. Again, Kati’s mother displays fearless ingenuity and chutzpah when she curries favor by offering to make a dress for one of the female Russians. Soon, she is outfitting the entire women’s corps. In exchange, mother and daughter are protected and amply fed.
Their lives under Stalin’s communist regime take an even darker turn, as Kati, “brainwashed,” actually reports her own mother to the police. Mator eventually brings us into the 21st century, focusing on generational trauma and the troubling narrative of Hungary’s revisionist history.

Kati is one of the two (out of 52) kindergarteners in her class who survived the Holocaust. She lost all 28 members of her extended family to Nazi genocide. Believing that her survival has given her “the energy to make my life count,” she pursued careers in journalism, fashion, theater and education before dedicating her life to sharing her story. She speaks in schools, libraries and public institutions, emphasizing survival over victimhood and the urgency of combatting prejudice.

Along with former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, she succeeded in getting Bill HB115 passed to make Holocaust education compulsory in New Hampshire schools. Her remarkable connection with youth has inspired her graphic novel, and now this film. These are being combined with classroom lesson plans for a worldwide distribution to schools as an initiative towards Holocaust education.

“I loved my childhood,” Kati reminds her audience. “Then things shifted. These things can happen here.”