My Father was the Enemy

Liliane’s mother went through a similar experience when she became pregnant. Anger and hatred about the German occupation were poured onto the easiest targets: the women and their children for their crime was: loving the enemy. Liliane’s mother couldn’t love her daughter. Liliane therefore loved the idea of her German father even more. She decides to look for him in Germany and after years of research finally finds a loving family and half brothers in East Germany. Michel’s mother hastely married a Frenchman in order to hide the true origins of her son. He only finds out after his mother’s death, when a birth certificate reveals what he had always felt: his father is a German soldier. Michel starts inquiring and many years later finds his father in Munich. This documentary shows how of German occupant soldiers were treated and how their mother’s were stigmatized as “collaborates” because they had committed the crime of loving the enemy. The children were an easy target and a valve in order to draw attention away from those who had truly – politically – collaborated with the nazi regime. Most have not overcome the trauma stigmatization  and many have started researching for their origins on the other side of the Rhine. Few were lucky enough to find their fathers and meet them. Still today, more than 60 years after the war, the taboo laying on this subject is to be felt in France as well as in Germany.


author & director | producer | projects & filmography | tv & social media