Who was Hana Brady?

That's the mystery an educator in Japan wanted to solve.

Fumiko Ishioka is the curator at the Children's Holocaust education centre in Tokyo.

With nothing to go on but a suitcase lent by the Auschwitz Museum, Ishioka and a group of kids worked together on a Holocaust project, hoping to honour the little girl whose name was on the suitcase.

All they knew at first about Hana Brady was that she was one of millions of Jewish children who died in a concentration camp during the Second World War.

And they wanted to know much more.

By the time Ishioka achieved what she set out to do, Hana Brady had become a person again, rather than a symbol, a statistic or a shadowy figure from the past.

Ishioka's research took her around the world, a journey of discovery that involved one family specifically even as it addressed the kinship of all people.

This is the story of Inside Hana's Suitcase, an extraordinary docudrama from Larry Weinstein that recreates Hana Brady's life using old family photos, reenactments of various events, commentary from school children in several countries -- and a focus on Hana's brother, George Brady.

Discovering that Hana's brother George was still alive and living in Toronto, was the breakthrough in Ishioka's research.

(Hana Brady has already been the subject of a documentary. Inside Hana's Suitcase draws on the material in Karen Levine's book, Hana's Suitcase, which is now taught in schools everywhere and has been translated into dozens of languages.)

Hana's story is riveting to start with, as she and her older brother are orphaned during the war, protected by an aunt and uncle and eventually shipped to the same camps where their parents died.

George Brady's recollections in the film are personal, detailed and heartbreaking; this is not a film about the Nazis or the wider history of the war, but a story about a boy who vows to protect his sister, and about children creating poetry and art before they died.

Inside Hana's Suitcase is not entirely without schmaltz, but it tells a deeply moving story without ever being maudlin or manipulative. That being said, this is not a movie you can watch without Kleenex handy, and plenty of it.

Then there's the movie's focus on Fumiko Ishioka, a woman whose determination and focus are frankly daunting. Ishioka wanted to teach the dangers of hatred and intolerance to Japanese children, and she brought amazing energy to the job of discovering everything she could about Hana Brady.

She and George Brady, who is now 81, are the centre of Inside Hana's Suitcase.

(This film is rated PG)

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