Rewind Is A Powerful Documentary

A harrowing watch that uses old home video footage as a gateway into an exploration of abuse being passed down from one generation to the next. Sasha Neulinger's filmmaking is open, raw, and urgently essential.

CW: Discussions of sexual assault against minors

Sasha Joseph Neulinger, the director of the documentary Rewind as well as its primary subject, was always being captured on camera. Neulinger’s dad, Henry, constantly lugged around this big camcorder to capture footage of his kids (which also included Neulinger’s sister Bekah). He didn’t just use this machine to ensure video proof of birthday parties or holiday dinners. There was always a camera capturing adolescent Sasha Neulinger, as if Henry wanted to ensure he had a record of every second of his first-born’s childhood. These videos were meant to capture happy memories. But in Rewind, they offer glimpse into a dark past hidden in plain sight.

Through the videos, we get visual proof of Neulinger’s changed behavior between the ages of five and six. A previously outgoing kid was now a tormented and withdrawn soul. What happened? It turns out this behavioral change stemmed from Neulinger being sexually assaulted by his uncle Howard Nevison. Bekah also experienced something similar at hands of a cousin and Uncle Larry. Those relatives, the ones who caused unspeakable harm to these children, are on-camera in that footage Henry captured. These videos, showing Uncle Larry acting goofy with a fake thick British accent or that cousin touching Bekah during a birthday celebration, now serve as a chilling glimpses into how the people who upended Neulinger’s life were hiding in plain sight.

The court proceedings that occurred once Henry and Neulinger’s mom found out about these instances of sexual assault happened over nearly a decade between the late 1990s and 2006. Rewind follows a now adult Sasha Neulinger, who takes viewers through the process of how he opened up to his parents about being sexually assaulted as well as subsequent revelations that revealed this behavior to be far from an anomaly. Henry, it turns out, was sexually assaulted by Larry as a child while Larry had previously been raped by Howard. The abusive behavior beget more abusive behavior. For his part, Henry says he didn’t turn out like his brothers because he, unlike Larry and Howard, was raised by his more compassionate father.

Abuse is a cyclical thing. Rewind explores how the ripple effects of abuse keep spreading from one member of the Neulinger family to another. Even adolescent Sasha Neulinger reflects this once he begins lashing out at Bekah in the wake of being molested. Being so open about that part of the aftermath of his own sexual assault contributes to Sasha Neulinger’s Rewind being such a raw, open movie. Further evidence of this quality of the movie is shown in Neulinger visiting his childhood psychiatrist for drawings he and Becka sketched that revealed that their family members had raped them. The pictures are haunting in countless respects, including in the fact that this is the only way these children could possibly express the horrors they’d experienced.

The second-half of Rewind emphasizes further tragedy in the form of how difficult it is to get powerful alleged sexual predators to atone for their crimes. While Larry and the cousin are arrested shortly after Sasha and Becka come forward with their stories, the court process for Howard, a famous opera singer in a New York synagogue, was much more prolonged. Sasha Neulinger interviews a police officer and an attorney general to get a better picture of the struggles faced in trying to get Howard to face any sort of trial for his alleged crimes. Sasha coming forward about what had happened to him was already an enormous challenge. But that was only the first step, as Rewind so vividly illustrates. In the process, one gets such a clear picture of the countless hurdles facing survivors of sexual assault. No wonder so many feel so daunted by all of it that they stay silent.

But Sasha Neulinger doesn’t remain voiceless. Not only has he crafted this documentary, but in the most poignant scene of Rewind, he and his childhood psychiatrist recount how Sasha, with the aid of a personally special yarmulke, testified against Howard in court. Through the early home video footage, we see how Sasha Neulinger was psychologically impacted by being sexually assaulted as a child. Through anecdotes about his court testimony and the final scenes of Rewind, we see how Sasha Neulinger has endured in the years since. While his fathers home video footage provides haunting glimpses of his past, Rewind eventually offers hope for Sasha Neulinger’s future.