Mémoire | Film

Lili - Robin and Germain Aguesse

Lili is dedicated to Lili Keller-Rosenberg, a survivor of the Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen camps and a leading figure in the transmission of Holocaust memory. Through her testimony and a narrative approach combining archival footage and reenactments, the film explores intergenerational transmission and the need to preserve a voice that is destined to disappear.

Thursday, February 26 on France 3 Hauts-de-France and on france.tv

Directed by Germain and Robin Aguesse, Lili paints a sensitive and deeply human portrait of Lili Keller-Rosenberg, one of the last surviving deportees still actively engaged in sharing her testimony with younger generations. The film follows her in her daily life, at home, but also during visits to the very sites of her deportation, particularly Ravensbrück, and in school classrooms.

The narrative relies on an ambitious visual approach, combining interviews, extensive archival material - photographs, documents, and previously unseen footage - and staged reenactment sequences that form the directors’ distinctive signature. These reenactments, performed by actresses portraying Lili at different stages of her life, seek to give form to memories that are sometimes without images, striving for emotional resonance and evocative power, while never replacing the witness’s own voice.

Conceived from the outset as a tool for transmission, Lili also has a clear educational purpose. The film is intended to be shown in schools when Lili is no longer able, as she has done for nearly fifty years, to meet students in person. It is designed to serve as a lasting relay of her testimony.

At the crossroads of historical documentary and embodied storytelling, Lili is part of an active memory initiative, committed to transmitting not only the facts, but also the emotion, dignity, and strength of a lifelong struggle against oblivion.

Written and directed by: Robin and Germain Aguesse
Production: Ariane Films, France Télévisions and Pictanovo
Narrated by: André Dussollier
Running time: 52 minutes

This documentary has received support from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.