After decades of trying to forget the past, a Holocaust survivor returns to Poland on her granddaughter’s class trip, determined to confront the difficult past once and for all. Pesya’s Necklace tells an emotional story of one woman’s life-long struggle that ends with a shocking twist.

“Why didn’t she want to go with me?!” Pesya’s daughter complains, feeling hurt that her mother has always refused her requests to accompany her back to Poland and is now suddenly willing to go with her granddaughter. “I’ve asked her a million times if she wanted to visit her home and said I’d love to go. Her reply has always been the same: ‘I, Pesya Goldfarb, survived the Holocaust. No further comments.’”

When Pesya was only seventeen, her whole family was sent to Auschwitz, where they were all gassed – only Pesya miraculously survived. Now that her granddaughter is seventeen, Pesya sees the past in a new light, and, feeling a special closeness with her sweet granddaughter, decides to return to her homeland so they can confront the past together. But it turns out that Pesya has a very specific, secret agenda – to retrieve the gold necklace her parents gave her as a birthday gift, which she and her sister hid just before the Nazis arrived. If Pesya can just find the necklace, maybe she’ll finally be ready to reveal the long-held secret behind it.

With impeccable acting from its mostly female case, Pesya’s Necklace reveals the quiet ways intense emotions can be expressed and explores the special bond between a grandmother and granddaughter. When Pesya leaves the group to sneak off and find her childhood home, her granddaughter follows quickly behind. A sweet moment passes between them while driving, revealing the different perspectives of grandmother and granddaughter that are bridged by the caring they feel for one another. While her granddaughter calls and apologizes to her teacher for running off, Pesya’s serious thoughts are interrupted by the young girl’s chatting. Listening in, the old woman gives a pensive look and a weak smile that speaks volumes to how she feels about her granddaughter.

She might be a sweet and sensitive kid, but Pesya’s granddaughter is no dope. She realizes that things change over time and there’s a good chance that Pesya’s childhood home doesn’t even exist anymore. But, resisting the impulse to deter her grandmother from making what could be a devastating trip, she silences her doubts and tries to make the emotional journey as easy as possible by asking about her grandmother’s childhood– without prying too much.

Hesitantly, she asks, “Grandmother, do you still remember where the necklace is hidden?”

“As if it were yesterday,” Pesya responds, staring coldly straight ahead.

But it’s not just the necklace’s hiding place that Pesya recalls so vividly. Along with the necklace, the awful truth about Pesya has been concealed for almost a lifetime. Her shameful secret will continue to haunt her as if it were only yesterday, unless the old woman finds the emotional strength to dig up the necklace and expose the painful truth.