Everything is Illuminated

Aroview: An ambitious debut for dir. Schreiber, telling the deadpan, yet wistful tale of an earnest NYC Jew (Wood) who travels to the Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during WW2.

Accompanied by a Russian 'helper' his grandfather, Wood negotiates cross-cultural confusion, discomfort and the odd angles of his emotions with a nonplussed and neurotic integrity. Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Soers, this avoids a literary approach for something both more sentimental and yet breezier, a unique addition to the canon of essential road movies.