According to a VNA reporter in Tel Aviv, the documentary portrait " Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire" has just been honored with the Yad Vashem award and officially premiered at the Docaviv Documentary Film Festival (Israel).
This is the latest work depicting the life of Elie Wiesel - a Jewish writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1986, and Holocaust survivor, who devoted his life to telling stories that millions of other victims no longer had the opportunity to share.
The film opens with a famous quote by writer Wiesel: “Whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness himself.” That was also his lifelong mission: to turn the memory of the Holocaust into a living and unforgettable legacy.
Director Oren Rudavsky - who has collaborated with Menachem Daum on several Holocaust documentaries - took on the project after being entrusted by Annette Insdorf, a film historian and close friend of the Wiesel family, who had turned down several offers from other filmmakers after Wiesel's death in 2016.
Director Rudavsky said the film was a challenging journey, both financially and emotionally. “It was a difficult task to make a film about a figure of Wiesel’s stature… He was a man whose humanistic message transcended his time, and is even more essential in today’s world ,” he said.
The film uses rare images, home archives and animation to recreate Wiesel's happy childhood in the town of Sighet - which was once part of Romania and then Hungary.
Vivid memories of the moment he and his family were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp at the age of 14, and the traumatic journey of surviving the death camps with his father are recreated realistically and movingly.
After the war, Wiesel lived in France, studied at the Sorbonne and became a journalist. Ten years later, encouraged by the French writer François Mauriac, he wrote his first work, Night, one of the most important books about the Holocaust. “I write to bear witness,” he says in the film.
The film also captures the iconic moment when writer Wiesel protested against US President Ronald Reagan's wreath-laying at the Bitburg military cemetery in Germany, which houses the graves of SS officers - the notorious Nazi force.
At the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony, Wiesel publicly asked Reagan to cancel his visit with a powerful speech on the responsibility of memory and human ethics.
The film also features other milestones in his life: his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, a return to Auschwitz with American TV host Oprah Winfrey, and a moment when African-American students passionately discussed his work Night in class.
The film has received numerous audience awards at film festivals in the United States and is scheduled to air on PBS's popular documentary series American Masters later this year. Director Rudavsky expressed hope that the film will be widely shown in theaters and documentary television channels in Israel.
The Docaviv Documentary Film Festival is an international film festival held annually in Tel Aviv, Israel. It is the only film festival in Israel dedicated to documentary films and is the largest film event in the city of Tel Aviv.
With its influence and prestige, Docaviv has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as one of the top film festivals, with award-winning works here eligible for consideration for Oscar nominations in the documentary category.
The Yad Vashem Prize is one of the noble honors presented by the Israel National Holocaust Memorial Institute, for works that have made outstanding contributions to education, commemoration and transmission of memories of the Holocaust./.
Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/phim-ve-chu-nhan-nobel-hoa-binh-elie-wiesel-gianh-giai-thuong-yad-vashem-post1041745.vnp
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