TECHNICAL DATA
Original Title: A Esteticista
Production Year: 2004
Runtime: 96 minutes
Original Language: Portuguese
Shooting Format: Betacam SP
Locations: São Paulowith Emmy Blum
Special Jury Award at Worldfest - Houston International Film Festival
Visions Du Réel, Switzerland
Revelation Film Festival 2005, Australia7º Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, Greece
Festival Punto de Vista NavarraDirector, Producer: Sergio Oksman
Director of Photography: Adolpho Cañadas
Editor: Fernando Franco
Sound Editor: Nacho Arenas
The Nazi physician Joseph Mengele devoted part of his experimental tests on human beings to proving that red-haired women had a different sensitivity level.
The narrator, Emmy Blum, is a 76-year old beautician who works in São Paulo. She was deported from Hungary in 1944 and she saw Mengele for the first time in Auschwitz's main courtyard. Some weeks later, she became one of his guinea pigs. After the war, their paths met again in Brazil.
Sixty years later, Emmy agrees on taking part in a documentary film about her life. Before the viewer, the movie shifts gears, becoming a reflection about the memory traps and the difficulties of reflecting the past in a movie.