A young man takes a strange and unexpectedly funny journey in search of a
family heroine he's never known in this screen adaptation of the novel
by
Jonathan Safran Foer. Jonathan (
Elijah Wood)
is a lifelong collector of any and all objects pertaining to his
family, and he has become obsessed with a woman he's never met. The
woman saved the life of his grandfather during World War II, when the
Ukrainian town where he was born was destroyed by Nazi troops. Wanting
to know more about the woman, Jonathan flies to the Ukraine, where with
the help of a hip-hop obsessed, gold-toothed tour guide and translator
named Alex (
Eugene Hütz), Alex's grandfather (a chauffeur who has claimed to be blind since his wife's death, played by
Boris Leskin),
and a dog named Sammy Davis Junior Junior, Jonathan searches for the
meaning of the present that lies buried in the past, unexpectedly
shedding the same such light on the lives of those around him.
Everything Is Illuminated was the first directorial assignment for acclaimed actor
Liev Schreiber.
