Frederick Wiseman adapts a chapter from Vasily Semenovich Grossman's novel Life and Fate into a monochrome monologue. Catherine Samie of the Comédie-Française performs as a Jewish woman doctor writing her final letter to her son in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. The extremely restrained reading, stage setting, and undramatic composition further emphasize the density of language and emotion. Contemplating themes of war and annihilation, loss and dignity, this work evokes quiet yet intense reflection on memory, motherhood, and human existence.

Adapted from Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate, Frederick Wiseman's The Last Letter is a fictional work set in a Ukrainian ghetto in 1941, following the Nazi takeover. Facing the imminent extermination of the Jewish residents, a physician named Anna Semyonova dictates a final letter to her son, who has reached safety beyond enemy lines. Her words, rooted in the intimate details of ghetto life, reveal the fear, courage, fragility, and dignity of a woman confronting certain death.

The film is also, in a sense, a documentary of a single face: that of actress Catherine Samie. On her landscape-like features, Wiseman captures the weathering effects of despair, creating a portrait of catharsis where pain, grief, and blessing intermingle. Through measured rhythms and carefully modulated pacing, he draws us into the mystery and power of the human face. Anna’s recurring close-ups seem to gradually diminish her once-sculptural presence, embodying the erosion of life itself. With thoughtful staging and luminous black-and-white cinematography, The Last Letter becomes one of cinema’s most resonant meditations on the Holocaust—a film that finds truth not in spectacle, but in the intimate gravity of a single voice.

• ProducerFrederick WISEMAN
• Screenplay Frederick WISEMAN
• Cinematography John DAVEY
• Edit Frederick WISEMAN
• Sound Frederick WISEMAN

Zipporah Films​​