Elie Wiesel: first person singular [Widescreen]

Elie Wiesel is a Nobel Prize-winning author, Holocaust survivor, and human rights activist. Born in the provincial town of Sighet, Romania on September 30, 1928, Wiesel was just fifteen when he, his family and most of the Sighet population were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Of Wiesel’s entire family, only he and his two older sisters survived. In this documentary, made for television, Wiesel is interviewed extensively and discusses his life, experiences of World War II, faith, Jewish background, relationship with his family, in particular his father, and his writings. Actor William Hurt narrates passages from Wiesel’s book ‘Night’, a memoir based on his time spent in Auschwitz as a teenager, decrying the horrors he witnessed first hand. Wiesel also offers observations on such current events as the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the Israeli-Palestine war. This documentary utilises black and white photographs of Europe, before and during World War II, and Wiesel’s own photos depicting the stages of his life. With background music by Bach, and a melancholy original score by Leonard Lionnet, this is a thought-provoking and intelligent work.