To Speak the Unspeakable – The Message of Elie Wiesel

  • 105'
  • Hungary
  • 1996

Judit Elek’s final, more widely internationally recognised film (as well as her last to be screened in its day at IFFR) is a documentary journey with writer/activist/academic Elie Wiesel. It explores several key places from his past including his hometown, Sighet, then and now Romanian but between 1940 and 1944 ruled by Hungary, and Oświęcim, infamous under its German name Auschwitz, where Wiesel survived the horrors of Nazi death camps. In Sighet, he meets people who still remember the last vestiges of the old Jewish culture young Elie was raised in, including an elderly man who turns out to be the brother of the Wiesel family’s doctor.

Memories abound in Auschwitz, where Wiesel speaks about what is deemed unspeakable. The journey is framed by two speeches he gave: one at the inauguration of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and another upon receiving his Nobel Peace Price in 1986. These moments are interspersed with choice historical film materials.

It’s difficult not to see the path of To Speak the Unspeakable – The Message of Elie Wiesel, as well as the film’s fragmented form, as something of a model that would influence the themes and structures of Elek’s 2019 film, Retrace (digital director's cut).

 

Olaf Möller

  • 105'
  • Hungary
  • 1996
Director
Judit Elek
Countries of production
Hungary, France, United States
Year
1996
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
105'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Mondani a mondhatatlant – Elie Wiesel üzenete
Languages
Hungarian, English, French
Producers
Judit Elek, Pierre Marmiesse, Sandor Simo
Production Companies
Danielfilm Studio, France 3 Cinema, Hunnia Film Studio
Sales
Danielfilm Studio
Screenplay
Judit Elek
Cinematography
Gábor Balog
Editor
Judit Elek, Judit Elek
Sound Design
György Kovács
Music
László Melis
Cast
Elie Wiesel
Director
Judit Elek
Countries of production
Hungary, France, United States
Year
1996
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
105'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Mondani a mondhatatlant – Elie Wiesel üzenete
Languages
Hungarian, English, French
Producers
Judit Elek, Pierre Marmiesse, Sandor Simo
Production Companies
Danielfilm Studio, France 3 Cinema, Hunnia Film Studio
Sales
Danielfilm Studio
Screenplay
Judit Elek
Cinematography
Gábor Balog
Editor
Judit Elek, Judit Elek
Sound Design
György Kovács
Music
László Melis
Cast
Elie Wiesel

Programme IFFR 2023

Focus: Judit Elek

Judit Elek (1937) is among world cinema’s most uncompromising figures. Beloved by IFFR founder Huub Bals, yet to this day little known in wider circles, Elek made both fiction and documentary films that are almost brutally personal, reflecting as much the history of her native Hungary as her own trauma-riddled life. International Film Festival Rotterdam is honoured to present the most complete retrospective so far of an auteur whose works and wisdom are needed today as urgently as ever.

Read more about this programme