Filmmaker Statement

My grandfather passed away shortly after filming DEMON BOX. This film is for him and for my son. As a child, I listened as family members with numbers on their arms sipped tea and casually recounted unimaginable atrocities from the Holocaust. Combined with the rise of Neo-Nazis in the 1980s, their stories of death and suffering planted seeds of fear and hopelessness. As a teen, those feelings grew to dangerous levels until I decided I didn’t like who I was and took steps to stop myself from living. Thankfully, I didn’t succeed. Since the birth of my son, I’ve wrestled with when and how to share stories from our family’s past. Stories that almost killed me, but also stories that make up a core part of who I am as a person and filmmaker. My hope with DEMON BOX is that by expressing and exploring my own struggles, my son will be better able to approach the weight of our history.