#577 - Oren Rudavsky and Annette Insdorf on Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire

Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 2025 edition of the New York Jewish Film Festival with Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire director Oren Rudavsky and co-producer Annette Insdorf. This conversation was moderated by Rachel Chanoff. With his unforgettable and shattering 1958 memoir Night, Elie Wiesel forever changed the way the Holocaust would be written about. A survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a teenager, the Romanian-born Wiesel became an international spokesperson and renowned author, eloquently transforming his trauma into literature of the highest and most profound order. In this enthralling new documentary, filmmaker Oren Rudavsky goes deeper into Wiesel’s philosophically abundant inner life, depicted with nuance and tenderness, and enriched by access to his personal archives. In many ways a private man despite being one of the most public voices of Holocaust remembrance, Wiesel is presented here in newly intimate ways known only to his closest friends. Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire stands as a crucial testament to an extraordinary man who helped shape our collective memory of the darkest chapter of the 20th century.