Documentary film »Nemt: A Language Without a People for a People Without a Language«

On Wednesday, 4 November 2026, at 6 p.m., at Passage Kinos Leipzig, the English-language film »Nemt: A Language Without a People for a People Without a Language« by Michel Grosman and Izabelle Rozenbaumas (USA 2004) will be screened (original version with English subtitles). The documentary will be followed by a discussion with historian Jurgita Verbickienė and director Michel Grosman. 

More about the film series:
The film series centers on the linguistic diversity of Jewish life and Jewish culture. Language is a central vehicle for the expression of belonging, experience, and memory, but also serves as a marker for the loss of entire worlds. In the mid-twentieth century, violence, war, expulsion, and murder culminated among other things in the destruction of Jewish »linguistic landscapes.«

The diversity of Jewish languages persisted under completely different parameters after World War II and the Holocaust and developed anew. The films shown in this series therefore cover a broad chronological spectrum and emerged in different decades. They offer insights, for example, into the endurance of Ladino in Israel and the demise of the German language in Bukovina after World War II, and engage with the emergence of German and Russian as Jewish languages in Israel from the immediate postwar period through to the present day. The series thereby aims to disentangle a cultural wealth that was largely lost during the twentieth century.

Curated by Albert Wiederspiel, the former director of the Hamburg Filmfest, and Yfaat Weiss, the series of international feature films and documentaries also offers an opportunity for audiences to converse on this topic with filmmakers and other experts.