Big Sonia tells the story of Sonia Warshawski, a spunky 89-year-old tailoring shop owner and survivor of the Holocaust. In this interview with KCTS 9, co-directors Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday reflect on family, healing and crazy car rides in Sonia’s pink Buick.
When the husband-and-wife filmmaking duo of Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday decided to make a movie about Leah’s grandmother Sonia, they initially thought they were creating a day-in-the-life short film about a spunky old lady in a tailor shop. But as Warshawski and Soliday began to excavate Sonia’s history as a Holocaust survivor, they encountered a much larger examination of intergenerational trauma and healing.
Six years later, their feature-length film Big Sonia debuted in a work-in-progress screening at SIFF 2016. A recipient of the SIFF True Productions grant, Big Sonia heads into its finishing stretch and is very likely to make a big impact with moviegoers later this year.