Brussels Transit on AllMovie

Brussels Transit is drawn from director Szlingerbaum's own childhood reminiscences. It is 1947: a family of Polish Jews is finally able to emigrate to the "promised land" of Belgium. The film is narrated by the family's mother in Yiddish, allowing the audience to anticipate the dramatic crux of the story: the family's difficulty in speaking the language and assimilating once they settle in Brussels. Very little happens of a catastrophic nature in this 80 minute film, though the director is able to draw full dramatic value out of the smallest of everyday activities (one of the highlights is a long scene in which the mother cooks a Polish delicacy in her new oven). Brussels Transit was filmed in black and white with 16-millimeter stock, the better to intercut the staged scenes with newsreel footage of postwar Poland and Belgium.