Protagonist is the young Chaja. She is studying philosophy in Antwerp in the early seventies.

Her parents survived the Holocaust: her mother wants to forget the period entirely, her father wants to dig up the two suitcases he buried in the war to rediscover his youth. Chaja flees her parents’ home and gets a job as a nanny with the Orthodox Jewish Kalman family. She finds herself in a very different world, but she loves the silent Simcha, the five-year-old baby of the household.

While the Kalman father watches with trepidation as Simcha goes closer to his non-Orthodox nanny, the mother admires her secretly, especially when the rebellious Chaja helps her against the racist doorman who makes life difficult for the family. Based on the novel by Carl Friedman,The shovel and The Loom, Left Luggage is the feature debut of Jeroen Krabbé, painter and actor who has performed in countless Dutch films, and since the Eighties in many Hollywood films, such as A World Apart and The Fugitive.