Cirrus@Austlit

Bio-pic.

'When Australian filmmaker Sophia Turkiewicz was seven years old, her Polish mother, Helen, abandoned her in an Adelaide orphanage. Sophia never forgot this maternal act of betrayal. Now in middle age, as Sophia examines her troubled relationship with Helen, she discovers the story behind Helen’s miraculous wartime escape from a Siberian gulag, her subsequent survival against the odds and the truth about an historic betrayal involving Stalin and the Allies.

'With Helen sliding into dementia, Sophia must confront her own demons. Did she ever truly know this woman who became her mother? Does she have it in her heart to forgive her? And is it too late?'

Source: Official website (oncemymother.com). (Sighted: 21/7/2014)

Set in a migrant camp during the years following World War II, a period when some four thousand Polish families came to Australia, the narrative focuses on Julian. Although married to Anna and with a son, he falls in love with Nina and she with him. As they and others face the new situations and prejudices that await immigrants and as they take on aspects of Australian culture, old-country values reassert themselves. Julian is eventually forced to make a decision between love and family.