Bird in Space

In London, Jerry Gold's mother calls with an impossible demand: travel to Romania and into Ukraine to save a wooden house her father built before the second world war. The house had been a refuge for the family before they were deported in 1941 to Transnistria, a part of the holocaust. Armed only with his mother's blurred 1980s photographs, a befriended truck driver and museum director and an uncanny sense that the land remembers him, Jerry is pushed through northern Romania's forests and borderlands toward Chernivtsi in Ukraine and the truth about the house. Using Romanian new wave cinema, the art of Brancusi, Romanian traditions and the richness of the landscape, BIRD IN SPACE blends history with the present day, depicting a country that is lost in time, still emerging from Communism and struggling with its past and future. The story is personal, one of searching and belonging and asks questions about middle-age, the impact of war and what we do with our personal and built heritage.