First Cousin Once Removed

Co-Producer: Shari Spiegel
Story Consultant: Susi Korda
Creative Associate: Mónica Savirón
Involved TV Channel: HBO Enterprises
World Sales: HBO Enterprises

Festivals

• 2012 New York Film Festival
• 2012 IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), VPRO Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary

Spanish premiere

This is filmmaker Alan Berliner''s intimate portrait of his cousin, friend and former mentor Edwin Honig, who is living out the last years of his life with Alzheimer''s. Honig was once a prominent and highly successful poet, translator, literary critic and university lecturer. In the final stage of his disease however, he has lost almost all connection with his past, his family, and his personal identity. But sometimes in conversation, his poetic soul flickers back to life again, producing beautiful moments as he striggles to describe what is happening to him. This sensitive documentary tackles Edwin Honig''s illness with compassion and humour, describing the story of his life with the same raw candour that characterized his poetry. Conversations with friends and family members paint a fragmentary picture of a life marked by tragedy, love, loss, irony and literary daring. Together, Honig''s personal history and the study of his mental decline are more than the sum of their parts: this is a film essay about the fragility of being human, and the profound role of memory in all of our lives.