Shot mainly in present-day Poland, Past Perfect is both a personal search for family memories and a compelling reflection on the disjunction between an inaccessible past and the memorials we construct around it. Cynthia Madansky wryly juxtaposes passages from guidebooks with interviews with her Polish-American grandmother, questions about grief posed by a psychologist, and the "memoirs" of a great-aunt who was killed in the Holocaust. The landscapes speak as well: the obliterated Warsaw Ghetto replaced by monotonous high-rises, a synagogue now a monument where people walk their dogs, and Auschwitz, a complex work of reconstruction.