My Underground Mother

The Sedona International Film Festival is proud to partner with the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University to present the one-day-only Sedona premiere of “My Underground Mother” on Monday, Sept. 28 at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre.

Meet the filmmaker! Director Marisa Fox will be in Sedona to host the film and do a live Q&A discussion after the screening.

Freedom fighter, double agent, femme fatale — Tamar said she was all three. Decades after her death, a page she wrote in a diary from a Nazi-run women’s camp reveals a hidden identity, leading her daughter on a global reckoning with the secrets she took to her grave.

“You think you know your mother until you don’t,” says filmmaker Marisa Fox. Tamar was a New York doctor’s wife who claimed she fled her native Poland on the cusp of World War II and was never a Holocaust “victim”. Twenty years after her death, Fox, a journalist and mother, learns Tamar had a secret identity and chases down leads that span the globe, uncovering a story of Nazi trafficking and a defiant band of sisters in a women’s forced labor camp.

Dogged research, extraordinary archival imagery and staggeringly candid interviews reveal a portrait of a woman who dared to be the hero of her own story, transforming herself from Nazi slave to freedom fighter, from refugee to spy and saboteur, ultimately reinventing herself as a matriarch in America.

“My Underground Mother” is a real-life story of a daughter coming to terms with a mother who went to extraordinary lengths not to be defined by trauma.

“Riveting. An edge-of-your-seat experience.” — The Guardian

MEET FILMMAKER MARISA FOX
Marisa Fox is a veteran journalist and first-time filmmaker whose work spans print, broadcast, and digital platforms. She has produced award-winning stories and social impact campaigns for Hearst, Time Inc., and others, and written for outlets including The New York Times, CNN, Ms., The Forward, and Ha’aretz. Her reporting often centers on gender, genocide, extremism, and sexual trauma. A “she source” for the Women’s Media Center, Fox made her directorial debut with My Underground Mother, which led to the unveiling of Holocaust memorials in Poland and the Czech Republic, and a digital exhibit with USC’s Shoah Foundation.

“My Underground Mother” will be shown at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre on Monday, Sept. 28 at 3:00 p.m. with filmmaker Marisa Fox present for a live Q&A discussion.

Tickets are $12, or $9 for Film Festival members. For tickets and more information, please call 928-282-1177. Both the theatre and film festival office are located at 2030 W. Hwy. 89A, in West Sedona.