Everything Is Illuminated | |
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Everything Is Illuminated movie poster
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Directed by | Liev Schreiber |
Produced by | |
Screenplay by | Liev Schreiber |
Based on |
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer |
Starring | |
Music by |
Paul Cantelon Sergei Shnurov |
Cinematography | Matthew Libatique |
Edited by |
Andrew Marcus Craig McKay |
Production
company |
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Distributed by | Warner Independent Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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104 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English, Russian, Ukrainian |
Budget | $7,000,000 |
Box office | $3,601,974 |
Everything Is Illuminated is a 2005 biographical drama film, written and directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, and was the debut film of Liev Schreiber both as a director and as a screenwriter.
Jonathan Safran Foer, (Elijah Wood) a young American Jew, goes on a quest to find the woman, Augustina, sister of Lista (Laryssa Lauret), who saved his grandfather, Safran Foer, during the Holocaust in a small Ukrainian town called Trachimbrod that was wiped off the map when the Nazis liquidated Eastern European shtetls. His guides are a cranky, antisemitic grandfather (Boris Leskin), his deranged Border Collie named Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr., and his over-enthusiastic grandson, Alex (Eugene Hutz), whose fractured command of English, passion for American pop culture, and constant chatter threaten to make the worst of every situation. The guides are not very knowledgeable about the subject of finding Jews, and usually just attempt to scam them by taking them on long journeys, but after hearing about Jonathan's compelling story, they decide they actually want to help him. After traveling through much of rural Ukraine, they eventually find Augustina's sister, who leads them to where Augustina was killed by Nazi soldiers after her father refused to spit on the Torah. Alex's grandfather kills himself after it was revealed he was Jewish and managed to survive the war himself by hiding his religion. Jonathan returns home after saying farewell to Alex, to whom he has grown close. Both Jonathan and Alex sprinkle soil gathered from the site of the massacre, on their respective grandfather's grave. Alex's grandfather is given a Jewish burial.