SYNOPSIS

FAMILY SECRET  tells the tale of a surprising discovery of an unknown brother whose existence was kept a secret from me and my family by my father, who died twenty-five years ago. My new-found brother, Pierre Radulescu-Banu, now 53, was born in war-time Paris and raised in Communist Romania by his mother, a Romanian physician, while my sister and I grew up in 1960's America, ignorant of our father's secret.

In putting this story on film, I want to capture the creation of my new family, my mother, my sister, my new brother Pierre and me. I am setting out to explore the ramifications of my father's secret on all of us. FAMILY SECRET  is a personal tale which will resonate for a broad cross-section of the public. It tells the story of a uniquely American experience, a microcosm of many of the political changes which have rocked America in the twentieth century immigration, the effects of the Second World War, the persecution and survival of European Jews, and East-block Communism versus the American system.

As West has met East in a very personal way, we have seen just how foreign close relatives can appear to each other. But we have also surprised at how similar we are, in looks and gesture, sense of humor and philosophy.

The theme of FAMILY SECRET  is both Pierre's and my resolution with the loss of our father. This is the film's emotional territory: close ties which are cut at vulnerable moments in a child's life, resonating into the future.

The ambivalent effect of our father's closely-held secret on our lives has finally played itself out into a great yet bittersweet reward for all of us in adulthood. By examining this family secret on film, I hope to take the audience on a journey where they weigh the value of an honest and open expression of the truth of relations between people, no matter how potentially explosive.