ABOUT THE PROJECT
LOGLINE
A woman kills her four daughters, her mother and herself. Decades later, the discovery of a child’s loom breaks the silence that endures when women’s bodies become battlefields of war.
SYNOPSIS
THE LOOM poetically explores what we endure when things fall apart and how silence ripples across society and through generations. The story begins with a fragment I overheard as a child. My grandmother told my mother about her cousin, Hanni, who, in 1945 Berlin, “shot and killed her four daughters, her mother, and herself” because she “feared rape by Red Army soldiers.” When Hanni’s husband returned, strangers occupied their apartment, and his family was buried in the yard. They must have noticed me listening because some details were filled in, and I was left with a neatly packaged story. Decades later, the story resurfaced with the discovery of a message inscribed on a child’s loom that had long sat on my mother’s shelf.
Made by artist Albert Allwelt, the loom bears the names of his four daughters. It reawakens what my grandmother called “the family tragedy” and takes me on a journey from Norway to Los Angeles to Berlin, where the erasure of rape and suicide obscures Hanni’s story.
When Russia invades Ukraine, a new generation of survivors refuses to be silenced by the shame and stigma of gender-based violence. I meet Maryna, a performance artist from Odesa who fled to Berlin. Intrigued by the parallels between Hanni’s story and her own work, Maryna joins my quest for answers. Inspired by the loom’s revelations, she unravels her own family’s mysteries, uncovering a deeply personal connection.
Once a relic, the loom becomes a symbol of unspoken histories and resilience. In a world still marked by sexual violence as a weapon of war, THE LOOM asks: How do we interrupt the legacy of pain woven into the fabric of our histories? Through two families, the film bridges generations, illuminating the intersection of silence, trauma, and art.
PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature
DIRECTOR Helene Kvale, Adam Briscoe
SCREENWRITER Helene Kvale, Anne Fabini
PRODUCER Helene Kvale, Adam Briscoe, Cynthia Kane, Nicholas Stuart
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER James Ivory, Simon Kilmurry, DMW Greer, Richard A. Wilson, Kristin Howard, Jenniphr Goodman, Nancy Dickenson
CO-PRODUCER Katharina Esch, Richard Hollant, Hugo Perez, Benno Grzimek
IMPACT PRODUCER Nicholas Stuart
WEBSITE theloomfilm.com
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