HOW I BECAME A PARTISAN

In 1944, Slovak partisans rise up against their Nazi occupiers and the collaborationist Slovak government. Among their ranks: the Roma partisan Ján Lacko. While he is out fighting, Lacko's family is taken to a forest and murdered. After the war has subsided, Lacko finds their partially charred remains at the site. He remarries and tries to go on with his life. 75 years later his great granddaughter Vera Lacková sets off to trace her great grandfather's past, on what is also a quest to find the Roma partisans that so often go unmentioned in the scope of memorial celebrations. Even in the year 2018, she repeatedly encounters an aggressive reticence and outright anti-Ziganism while pursuing her research. This documentary film reveals how the lives of the descendants of a partisan fighter in the Second World War are still impacted by the events of that period, 75 years after the end of hostilities. In making her case, Lacková provides glimpses into her private surroundings. Over the course of her film, she also points out frightening parallels between the reign of the Nazi terror regime and the resurgence of racist currents throughout today's Europe.