In the city to find images from his father's childhood, Israeli filmmaker Erez Laufer found himself and his family compelled to document 26/11, lending a horrific twist to their family saga in rafting to Bombay
In the city to find images from his father's childhood, Israeli filmmaker Erez Laufer found himself and his family compelled to document 26/11, lending a horrific twist to their family saga in rafting to Bombay
When Israeli filmmaker Erez Laufer got off the plane at 7 am on a still November morning in 2008, he was hoping to catch glimpses of the "magical childhood adventure" he had grown up listening to his father reminisce about. Instead, he found himself, his father, mother and sister thrust inside a nightmare that was four degrees too close. 
"We were supposed to meet Sam Marshall, my father's childhood friend, at 5 pm that evening in the Taj Mahal Hotel," says the 47 year-old over the phone from Tel Aviv, Israel, adding, "They hadn't seen each other in over 50 years." Luckily, Sam managed to escapeu00a0 the attacks.
Being somewhat familiar with the city, Erez took his family to a hotel in Juhu, instead. At the hotel, his father Nahum watched footage of his mother recount her experiences as a Jewish refugee that Erez had shot over 20 years ago as film student. "I had kept the footage all those years, which my father didn't know about for the longest time."
Cruel twist of fate
Rafting To Bombay, is Erez' 'retelling' of his father's childhood: "a boy among a group of refugees". Seven of those growing up years were spent in Chabad House in Colaba, the place where Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg were killed.
"People try to understand the political motivations, but no one can justify the actual killing of another human being," says Erez about the terror attacks."Shooting the documentary was difficult in that it was very moving, but in a 'funny' way we also brought back my grandmother from 20 years ago," says the Oscar-nominated filmmaker of the 'tale of three generations.'
"What's interesting is that the story is told from two perspectives: there's the story that I grew up on, told to me by my father, which was almost like a fairytale, and then there's the story of the grown-up mother," elaborates Erez.
Those two perspectives are brought into the present against the backdrop of 26/11 in the 71-minute film, of which Erez says, "What happened was not my choice. I didn't choose to link the past with the present. I would never choose to make a film about the terror attacks."
Childhood flashback
Raftingu00a0To Bombay Directed by Erez Laufer Israel 2008, 71 minutes. In English and Hebrew, with subtitles. Rafting To Bombay chronicles the return of Israeli director Erez Laufer's father to the city of his childhood: Mumbai. The filmmaker also uses footage of his grandmother recounting her memories of the city, 20 years ago. In the city to ostensibly tell his father's escape at the age of five with his mother, Erez finds himself and his family thrust inside the agonising unfurling of the Mumbai terror attacks, taking his family back to memories of the 1940s when they fled from the Nazis and sought a safe haven in Mumbai.
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