Tuesday | May 27 | 19:15 | Cinematheque 1
Screening and Award Ceremony
For the fourth year running, Docaviv and Yad Vashem will be presenting the Yad Vashem Award for an outstanding Holocaust-related documentary. This year, the $3,000 prize will be presented to Oren Rudavsky, director of Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.
Award committee’s statement:
The film offers an intimate perspective shedding new light on the character, philosophy and insights of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel – a Franco-American Jewish writer, journalist, philosopher and intellectual born in Sighet, Romania. A Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1986), he felt the necessity to put the trauma of the Holocaust into words, and dedicated his life to Shoah remembrance. Wiesel was known as a beacon of universal human values and as a symbol of the power of the human spirit.
Wiesel’s philosophy appears in the film as a driving force that generates guilt but also an incentive for action and a commitment to be the voice of those who are no longer here to testify. The Holocaust challenged Wiesel’s identity and his connection to Judaism, God, tradition and Jewish observance, fundamental values that he remained committed to and entrusted to his son in his last letter.
Thanks to exclusive access to Wiesel’s family and personal archives, testimonies and interviews with those closest to him–including rare interviews with his wife and son–the film reflects the moral dilemmas that Wiesel faced throughout his life, and raises profound questions about faith, justice and humanity. The use of dreams, the movement between the personal and the historical, and the rich documentation of Elie Wiesel’s eloquence infuse Rudavsky’s film with emotion, poetry and significance.
The award will be presented by Tzvika Fayirizen, Yad Vashem CEO ,at a special event before the screening.
About the film:
Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire
A comprehensive and compelling biography that, using animation, archival footage, and interviews, recounts the story of Eliezer, a Romanian boy who survived the concentration camps and became Elie Wiesel, the author, educator, and Nobel laureate who dedicated his life to the sacred act of bearing witness for posterity and as a legacy for the dead.
