''No Place on Earth'' is a 2012

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

produced, written and directed by

Janet Tobias Janet Tobias is a media executive specializing in healthcare as well as an Emmy Award-winning director, producer, and writer. She directed '' Fauci'', and also '' No Place On Earth'' in 2012, a docudrama about two caves in the Ukraine in which th ...

, based on Esther Stermer's memoir ''We Fight to Survive''. It was released theatrically in the United States on April 5, 2013.

Synopsis

In 1993,

NYPD The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...

officer and caving enthusiast Chris Nicola visited

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

to explore the Verteba and

Priest's Grotto Priest's Grotto (also known as ''Ozerna'' or ''Blue Lakes'' ua, Озерна, meaning: "lake") is a cave in western Ukraine near the village of Strilkivtsi ( ua, Стрілківці), located within Chortkiv Raion (District) of Ternopil Oblast ...

caves, and found evidence that they had recently been inhabited by humans. After discovering that the caves were used by three Jewish families (Stermer, Dodyk, and Wexler), comprising 38 people, led by matriarch Esther Stermer (1888–1983), escaping

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

, he embarked on a decade-long quest to find survivors. The film features interviews with some of the 36 survivors and/or their descendants, now living mainly in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

. It includes a segment in which Tobias brings some of the survivors, the oldest of whom was a nonagenarian, back to the caves.

Release

The film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Hamptons International Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the Jewish Film Festival Berlin.

Accolades

Its screenwriters, Janet Tobias and Paul Laikin, were nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay from the

Writers Guild of America The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers: * The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO * The Writers Guil ...

Cast

* Chris Nicola as himself * Saul Stermer as himself * Sam Stermer as himself * Sonia Dodyk as herself * Sima Dodyk as herself * Yetta Stermer as herself * Sol Wexler as himself * Erin Grunstein Halpern as herself * Cliff Stermer as himself * Katalin Lábán as Esther Stermer
Péter Balázs Kiss
as Saul Stermer
Dániel Hegedüs
as Sol Wexler * Balázs Barna Hídvégi as Nissel Stermer * Fruzsina Pelikán as Sonia Dodyk * András Orosz as Sam Stermer * Mira Bonelli as Sima Dodyk * Nóra Kovács as Yetta Stermer * Bernadett Sára Borlai as Hannah Stermer * Péter Zsömbelyi as Zaide Stermer * Norbert Gogan as Louie Wexler

References

External links

* * *
Review from ''Variety'' (September 9, 2012)

Review at Roger's Movie Nation (February 24, 2013)
2012 films Documentary films about the Holocaust Films about Jews and Judaism Films shot in Hungary Films shot in Ukraine The Holocaust in Ukraine 2010s English-language films {{hist-documentary-film-stub