Best known for his Marat/Sade play, Peter Weiss was also an incisive poet, painter, and novelist, although his works have rarely been published in English.

Based on an autobiographical novel that is usually translated as Leavetaking this 80-minute essay draws on home movies, drawings, archival footage, and Weiss’s own incisively carved words to convey the essence of his unusually dramatic childhood. Initially drawn to the atavistic lure of Nazism in his youth, he had to be reminded by his closest friend that having a Jewish father meant he couldn’t fully enjoy what he later recognized as “the insane notion of a collective destiny”. They had the means to escape, and he took art, music, and life lessons in London, Prague, and Stockholm, although his family’s security was already smashed by the accidental death of his beloved sister before the war. It’s quite sombre, and some viewers may struggle with the decision to have a young, and very good, actor reading Weiss’s lines in modern settings. (There’s even a Clash tune at one point!) But I found it deeply moving throughout.