But all that is left of the graveyard after the wartime desecration is a lone marker. As the filmmaker and her camera travel from this destroyed graveyard, through the town of Poddebice and on to the nearby city of Lodz, we meet Layb Prazkier who serves as custodian of the immense, crumbling Jewish cemetery of Lodz. Here we discover that Poland herself is all but cleansed of Jews. With a cast of characters that Hollywood could hardly dream up, the Capraesque story is less an expose of insider politics than a life-affirming character study where democracy prevails. Nanjing, Mai Lai, Srebrenica.
History sadly repeats itself.
Utilizing clandestine, startling footage of the town's final days, Warsinski unflinchingly documents Western guilt and the UN's final, bloody capitulation. Powerful interviews detailing the disparate views of combatants on both sides are woven together with vivid descriptions of the impossible journeys faced by the few civilians who made it out alive. The clock ticks down to the final seconds and she alone must choose her fate. Nine years in the making, and nominated for a 1998 Academy Award, Regret to Inform is filmmaking and storytelling at its finest. Filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn, a Vietnam War widow, takes us to a Vietnam we have never known.