The Last Letter

Frederick Wiseman

THE LAST LETTER (LA DERNIERE LETTRE) is based on a chapter of Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate. It is 1941. A Ukrainian ghetto has fallen to the Nazis and all of its Jewish residents are slated to be murdered. In the midst of the impending horror, the town’s physician, a woman named Anna Semionova, dictates one final letter to her son, who is safe outside of enemy lines. The letter, with its detailed observations of daily life in a ghetto,reveals the fear, courage, frailty, compassion and dignity of this woman as she reviews her life and faces her death.