The Last Letter

"An epic of the imaginationÛthe saddest and most beautiful of lullabies."--New York

Famed documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman makes his first foray into fiction with the The Last Letter. In a shattering solo performance by the legendary Catherine Samie of the Comedie-Francaise, The Last Letter dramatizes a letter sent from a mother to her son during the fall of the Ukraine to the Nazis. The haunting monologue is based on a section of Russian writer Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate. (61 mins.)

Beginning each program is the restored Jewish Life in Cracow, a fascinating artifact of pre-Holocaust Poland produced to encourage diaspora Jews to visit their homeland. (Yitzhak Goskind, 1939; 10 mins.)

Join us after the screening on Sunday, May 4, for a discussion led by Neil Jacobs and David Neal Miller of Ohio State's Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.