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THE WAR INSIDE

By Nadia TASS

Drama - Development 2018

It's 1969 and the modern world is advancing at a thrilling pace, but LILY MARGULES' memory keeps her locked in a terrifying past. Triggered by a surprise pregnancy, hallucinations of the violence of war suddenly invade her present, forcing her to recall the long-suppressed horror of her childhood wh

- Year of production
- 2018
- Genres
- Drama, Historical, True Story
- Countries
- USA, POLAND, GERMANY, ISRAEL
- Languages
- ENGLISH, GERMAN, RUSSIAN
- Budget
- 5 - 10 M$
- Duration
- 120 mn
- Director(s)
- Nadia TASS
- Writer(s)
- Jennifer Grace COOK
- Producer(s)
- Jason GURVITZ (Green Dog Films), Shelly GLASSER
- Synopsis
- LILY MARGULES has a good life, a loving husband, a beautiful home in the NYC suburbs, regular tennis dates with friends, a meaningful job, and a place within her synagogue. Her days are filled with a happy mundane middle-class rhythm.
  
  The terror of her childhood in Poland is in her past. Or is it? Fearing the pain that comes with loss, Lily denies feeling anything too deeply. She has suppressed the whole of her history, distancing herself from happy memories of her family. Lily cannot freely express hope, joy, or love. In a world filled with so much hate, Lily avoids intimacy and vulnerability; and she ignores the battle brewing inside.
  
  Lily is also overlooking the state of her marriage. She may prefer a quiet, perfectly ordered home, but her husband, EDDIE, longs for the chaos of a family. He, too, survived the war and is plagued by memories of killing with his bare hands as a Russian Partisan. Grateful they live in a modern world with new technology and new opportunities, Eddie lets go of his past and seizes everything life offers.
  
  For Eddie, they exist in an in-between state, and after losing so much, he is desperate for more. But Lily's unwillingness to start a family and inability to show him love with passion fill him with resentment. Appeasing his pressure, Lily agrees to consultations with fertility specialists and adoption lawyers, but she secretly sabotages them, determined to avoid the emotional vulnerability that comes with family.
  
  Then a regular checkup brings startling news: Lily is pregnant. Her heart bursts with joy for an instant, but terror bites back with a vengeance when she's overcome by a hallucination of HERMANN, a young German guard who tortured her. Suddenly appearing in her kitchen, Hermann is alive and empowered, holding a pistol to her head. He is the rage and anger of humanity boiling from deep in her subconsciousness, assaulting her with the belief that nothing good can thrive.
  
  Caught in Hermann's hold, Lily hides the pregnancy from Eddie, denying him the one thing he wants and deepening the wedge between them. With Hermann comes a host of aggressive memories: a crowded elevator becomes a packed cattle car filled with Jewish prisoners traveling to their deaths, and a chain link fence morphs with vicious teeth into barbed wire containment. Detailed visions of the past invade the present, and Lily struggles to suppress it all. Her already fragile mental state may not survive Hermann's fierce hold, threatening her life and that of her and Eddie’s unborn child.
  
  Lily must find her way through this darkness. She must recapture the joy that was her life before the war - the joy that is possible now. When her younger sister, RACHEL, discovers her secret pregnancy and the terrifying hold Hermann still has, Rachel fights to help Lily confront her fear and embrace the love they knew before the Nazis took everything.
  
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- Partners & financing
- 2.2M Canada