This is a story of resilience, the human ability to overcome the worst situations, and straighten one’s personal course. It is the story of Sigfried Meir, or Jean Sigfried, or Luis Navazo, a man of multiple identities.
Sigfried Meir is currently 82 years old and lives in Ibiza, where he has been a successful businessman in the world of catering and fashion since the 60s. For decades he kept silent about his past, about his childhood, Bye now. «At the beginning, when I was still a child and it seemed that hell was over, I told him. With all the luxury of details. But I could see in people’s eyes that it seemed like an invention, so I got angry and stopped telling it.» Of Jewish descent, he was deported, with his parents, to Auschwitz in April 1943, at the age of 9. Only he survives. He also survived the so-called «death march» – the evacuation of Auschwitz by forced marches due to the arrival of the Allies. In the new camp, in Mauthausen, he meets his true savior, Saturnino Navazo, the Spanish Republican prisoner who acted as a father to him in the camp and after his release. As a young man he wanted to be a singer and actor in that Paris de la Rive Gauche, where he coincided with Jean Paul Belmondo, George Moustaki, Jacques Brel and Boris Vian. He starts a successful singing career in France and Canada, but fails to be number 1 in Paris, where melodic singers begin to lose ground to the ye-ye wave. Dissatisfied with the singing career, in the 60s he arrived in Ibiza and reinvented himself again. He set up several restaurants and the first macro-discotheque on the island, all the while creating the «Ad-lib» fashion, a fashion that is exported from Ibiza to the whole world and that arises from one of his old trades – that of a tailor – but especially his very fine sense of business.
When his stepfather died, he collapsed. All his triumphs as a singer and as a businessman, his desire for success had only one spectator: Saturnino Navazo. «Everyone asks me how it is possible that a person with whom I spent only five years of my life has influenced me so much. They say that I have idealized it, but it is not so. Navazo was a good man, a saint.» The whole meaning of life disappears for him. That’s when his friend Georges Moustaki comes to his rescue, helping him face his past to continue living.
An essential documentary that reveals a fascinating character. Its director, Mallorcan Luis Ortas, made the presentation and held a discussion with the audience.
Data sheet
Title: Después de la niebla
Screenplay: Pedro de Echave García
Direction: Luis Ortas
Production: Kinetica Productions
Chamber: Jaume Carrió and Iskra Karadzhova
Edition: Jaume Carrió and Iskra Karadzhova
Year: 2015
Duration: 82′