Gerrie Timmerman
Gerrie Timmerman
LOGLINE: When a documentary filmmaker is forced to return to the world of magic to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of a Jewish magician in the Holocaust, she unexpectedly finds startling links to her deceased magician father, shattering everything she has known as true.
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
SYNOPSIS:
Once upon a time, there was a young girl, Macey, whose father was a magician. But she hated magic and wanted to become a filmmaker. Almost three decades later, Macey works at the Shoah Foundation, filing Holocaust testimonies while trying to write screenplays in the evening.
In another time and space, five decades earlier, a Jewish magician with the stage name Ben-Ali-Libi, works himself up from deep poverty to fame. He performs for citizens and royalty alike and searches for a sheltered home for his disabled daughter.
One day Macey finds a haunting poem about a Jewish magician, who vanished in the Holocaust. When Macey, the aspiring filmmaker, goes on a quest to find out what happened to Ben-Ali-Libi, while still trying to avoid getting into the world of her dad, the magician.
When the Nazi’s invade Ben-Ali-Libi’s home country of the Netherlands, he loses everything that he has built, including the daughter who he thought he had brought to safety. Against all odds, Ben-Ali-Libi searches for ways to stay alive, through all means known to him.
Then, when Macey discovers that Ben-Ali-Libi has been seen 1,5 years after being deported to a death camp, she knows she has to confront her demons to be able to find that one magician. While Ben-Ali-Libi once again turns to magic to help him find a way out of his darkness.
In the end, Macey’s search for Ben-Ali-Libi opens a door for both a vanished magician and her repressed self, to reappear.
The outcome to this mystery lies in the question:
Was Ben-Ali-Libi able to pull off the world’s greatest vanishing act?
2024