I grew up in a community of survivors. As a kid, I sat at the feet of Holocaust survivors and listened to their stories. As a teen, I worked with local Lost Boys from Sudan to bring them to schools to speak. Whenever I heard their stories, I felt a need to share them, to bring the deepest core strengths and struggles within our nature to light.

At its core, “Where We Disappear” is a story of survival. Among the millions of victims of the Gulag labor camps, women were imprisoned for speaking out, for protecting their family, for saying no to powerful men— and that was only the beginning of their struggle. The story bridged my interests in history and activism with my passion for filmmaking. The challenge was then how to relate it to the cast and crew and explore it together.

In such an extreme place as the Siberian Gulag, what is the one thing each character draws strength from and how do they protect it? The question guided the actors and I through intense rehearsals before production. The answer became our foundation so we could walk onto set and tackle scenes with emotional truth. It also gave us room to ‘play’ on set, unusual as that sounds for a prison camp, and try variations in each take.

This is a timely film— about women who refuse to be silent and a history that is not only rare to see on film, but is currently being erased.

A survivor’s lifeline – that discovered raw core that keeps one from breaking – and our crew’s commitment through details and rehearsals, all aim to make this story relevant. Pair that with a twist and we have a film worth sharing with Beloit’s community.

~Simon Fink