Forgiveness (2008 film)

Forgiveness is a 2008 American dramatic Holocaust film written and directed by Polish-American director Mariusz Kotowski, with a screenplay by Allan Knee. The film is marked as being the director's first feature-length film.

Plot

A Roman Catholic child Apollonia Kowalski (Juli Erickson) and a Jewish child Esther Blumenfeld (Dell Aldrich), were childhood best friends in 1940's Poland. The two girls were separated when Esther was taken away to a Nazi concentration camp. When the war ended, both girls separately emigrated to the United States with their families. They remained separated thereafter.

Years later, Apollonia's daughter Maria Patterson (Shelley Calene-Black) and Esther's daughter Sarah Blumenfeld (Sydney Barrosse), have become successful professional women, but each still deals with the memories of the Holocaust via strained relationships with their respective mothers. Esther dies but has left a memoir of her experiences in the camp with her daughter, Sarah. Apollonia is confined to nursing home and though Maria tries her best to care or her, she and her mother are at constant odds. A secret that Apollonia has been hiding comes to light, and the uncovering of this secret causes Apollonia and Maria to resolve their differences and brings Maria and Sarah into each other's lives.