Documentary | 30 min | 2021
Dreyfus Drei is a documentary about family, memory, and coming to terms with a history that remained unspoken for decades.
Artist Ella Dreyfus grew up in a Jewish household in Sydney. Yet her father, born in Germany, never spoke about the family’s origins or his escape from Nazi persecution. Only after his death does Ella begin searching for this suppressed history.
Her journey takes her to Australia, where she visits her uncle, who fled Germany together with Ella’s father on a Kindertransport to Australia in 1939, and to Germany, where her nephew now lives. Through conversations, encounters, and visits to former family homes, she approaches a past shaped by loss, exile, and different ways of carrying on. At several of these locations, Ella creates temporary public art installations that make her family’s traces visible once again.
