This powerful documentary about Elie Wiesel is playing in NY for a few more days

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire is a new documentary about the late Romanian-American Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, best known for Night, one of the most influential accounts of the Holocaust.

Directed by Oren Rudavsky, the film draws on archival recordings, photographs and video footage, complemented by painted animations, to let Wiesel, who passed away in 2016, narrate his own story in his own words.

The documentary is now showing at the IFC Center in the West Village, with additional screenings this week. It is also playing in Huntington, Queens and Pleasantville. Here is a list of New York theaters where the film is screening, along with ticket information.

Speaking with Kveller about the creation of the documentary, Rudavsky recounts developing the film alongside Wiesel’s widow Marion—who passed away in 2024, when the project was still in development—and their son Elisha.

“We discussed how we could make this film, and I said, we need complete independence,” Rudavsky said to the outlet. “This needs to be our film, but your cooperation is vital to making this the kind of film that will reveal Elie Wiesel in a new way. And so they gave us that consent. We wrote up a proposal [saying] this film, in effect, will be narrated by Elie Wiesel. It will be in his own voice and we need access to your personal archives, and we need to film you all, and that’s what we did. It [was] a four year process.”

In addition to tracing Wiesel’s childhood in Sighet, Romania, his experiences during the Holocaust and his postwar life, the documentary explores the enduring impact of Night, focusing on how schools across the country continue to teach the book as part of their curriculum.

As for what Wiesel would have thought about the current moment in time, one defined by rising antisemitism across the world and major dissonance within the state of Israel, both Rudavsky and his film stay away from making statements on behalf of the subject.

“I have no idea what Elie would have said about the present moment,” the director said to Kveller. “There’s no way of knowing. But particularly at Jewish film festivals, I noticed this palpable sense of comfort in [hearing] a voice of such compassion and understanding. Elie cared about all human beings, Jewish, non-Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian.”

Check out the trailer of Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire right here: