Once

Once (2002) is an experimental documentary about language and the utopian desire for home. Once takes as its subject students, young and older, who have come to study Yiddish for a summer at YIVO, the centre for Yiddish language at Columbia University in New York. The film looks at the loss of language and culture, and the desire for its return, but exposes the shortcomings of nostalgia and the desire for history. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2002.