Everything Is Illuminated

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Everything Is Illuminated

PG-13

2005

1h 46m

Comedy

Drama

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Popcornmeter

64%

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114 Reviews

89%

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50,000+ Ratings

A young Jewish-American man obsessed with his family history, Jonathan Safran Foer decides to journey to Ukraine to find out more about the life of his grandfather. Guided by Alex, a rap-obsessed local, Jonathan ventures into the heartland of Ukraine seeking to shed light on events that occurred to his grandfather during World War II. Joining Jonathan and Alex is the latter's surly grandfather and a dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.

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Critics Consensus

Although it excises much from its famously dense source material, Everything is Illuminated is a quirky, ambitious debut film from Liev Schreiber.

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Marjorie Baumgarten

Austin Chronicle

Oct 22, 2005

2.5/5

Nevertheless, Everything Is Illuminated has a haunting afterglow, one that neither satisfies nor illuminates, but at least keeps the flame alive.

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Amy Biancolli

Houston Chronicle

Oct 8, 2005

3.5/4

It's profound in the way that life is profound in hindsight, its view of the past both fixed in history and mutable in the telling. And it's exquisitely tender.

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Eleanor Ringel Cater

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Oct 2, 2005

C

This isn't a frivolous film or a dumb one. Mostly, it feels like a mistake -- the wrong director matched with the wrong material.

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Stefan Pape

Common Sense Media

Mar 4, 2025

While Schreiber shows promise behind the camera, the competing tones never quite harmonize into a satisfying whole.

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Felicia Feaster

Creative Loafing

Feb 3, 2020

Rather than aiming to please, the film expects a certain patience on the viewer's part as it ambles and slowly shifts from an often forced quirkiness to a bone-deep melancholy. That change of tack proves worth waiting for.

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Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.com

Apr 15, 2009

C-

The lamentable influence of Dave Eggers' oh-so-precious post modern literary devices from "A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius" (2000) are glued all over a bullet proof piece of magical realism...

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Maria R

@RT63332918 Apr 28, 2026

Memory doesn't only live in our minds. It lives in objects, in places, in the silence of those who survived and couldn't speak. Young American travels with almost nothing — a photograph, a name. Yet even that fragment pulls him back, the way a root pulls toward water. A woman spent decades collecting remnants of destroyed lives — photos, rings, small ordinary things — keeping them "just in case" someone would one day come and ask. The sunflowers around her house say everything. Seeds scatter far and take root in new soil — America, Argentina, anywhere. But the original roots stay behind, in the dust of vanished villages, in names without graves. The diaspora is the seed. The shtetl is the root. Looking back is not nostalgia. It is necessity. Without knowing where you come from, you cannot fully know who you are. Jonathan didn't cross the world for a photo. He came to confirm that something real stood behind him — that he wasn't invented. We all carry ground we've never walked on.

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Bill G.

@BillGibson79 Mar 14, 2026

Great! Cinematography, casting, acting, originality, just everything!

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Jennifer B

@RT90024712 Nov 2, 2025

I can't agree with most reviews here. This movie was brilliant. A journey to the past, Jonathon believed he was discovering his family but Alex gained much more.

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Rich S

@RPS1963 Dec 21, 2024

Liev Schreiber's directorial debut is a whimsical, almost fantasy-like journey into the past. It's unique. Some would say odd. And some would say it's not even appropriate. Too soon, maybe? But it will never be "not too soon." It lives on and we deal with it the best way we know how. And how one person handles something like the Holocaust is not universally suitable for the masses. For a couple of hours, though, you can watch "Everything Is Illuminated" and see three interwoven stories that touch on the horrible events of the past. You will chuckle and maybe laugh out loud. But always, just as in life, the atrocities are going to be right there, just out of our sight in the darkness.

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Riccardo D

@RickDB Mar 4, 2024

Absolutely beautiful and deep. Worth watching. Fun and moving at the same time.

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g j

@g.username Oct 27, 2023

Wryly funny and heart-wrenchingly sad. A truly beautiful film.

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Liev Schreiber

Director

Elijah Wood

Jonathan

Eugene Hutz

Alex

Boris Leskin

Alex's Grandfather

Laryssa Lauret

Lista

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Synopsis

A young Jewish-American man obsessed with his family history, Jonathan Safran Foer decides to journey to Ukraine to find out more about the life of his grandfather. Guided by Alex, a rap-obsessed local, Jonathan ventures into the heartland of Ukraine seeking to shed light on events that occurred to his grandfather during World War II. Joining Jonathan and Alex is the latter's surly grandfather and a dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.

Director: Liev Schreiber
Producer: Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf
Screenwriter: Liev Schreiber
Distributor: Warner Independent
Production Co: Telegraph Films, Stillking Films, Big Beach Films, Warner Independent Pictures
Rating: PG-13 (Language|Disturbing Images/Violence|Sexual Content)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Sep 16, 2005, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Oct 2, 2008
Box Office (Gross USA): $1.7M
Runtime: 1h 46m
Sound Mix: Surround

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