THE LONELY CHILD

USA | 2026 | 109 minutes
World Premiere, July 18, 2026, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

The Lonely Child is a haunting Yiddish lullaby written during the Holocaust, capturing the heartbreak of a mother and daughter torn apart by war. Eighty years later, the daughter of the child in the song embarks on a powerful journey to trace the song’s footprint, uncovering its unexpected impact across generations.

SYNOPSIS

The Lonely Child is a feature documentary that traces the extraordinary journey of a little-known Yiddish lullaby, “Dos Elnte Kind,” written inside the Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust. More than 80 years later, the song becomes a bridge across generations when journalist Alix Wall—the daughter of the child immortalized in the lullaby—sets out to understand its origins and enduring power. Her search leads her to musicians, scholars, archivists, and Holocaust descendants around the world who continue to carry the song forward through performance, preservation, and memory.

Through intimate conversations and powerful musical interpretations, the film explores themes of inherited trauma, resilience, cultural survival, and art as resistance. The lullaby also opens a window onto the story of the Paper Brigade, the group of Jewish intellectuals who risked their lives to save cultural treasures from Nazi destruction. What begins as a personal family investigation unfolds into a moving meditation on memory, loss, and the enduring strength of the human spirit.

“In ordinary times each song would probably have travelled a long road to popularity. But in the ghetto we observed a marvelous phenomenon: individual works transformed into folklore before our eyes.”
— Shmerke Kaczerginski | Partisan, Poet and Songwriter

CREDITS

DIRECTED, PRODUCED, & WRITTEN BY

Marc Smolowitz

WRITER | PRODUCER

Alix Wall

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS

Penny B. Jackson
Thomas Campbell Jackson

EDITOR | WRITER | CO-PRODUCER

Michaelle McGaraghan

EDITOR

James Codoyannis

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Matthew Rome

ORIGINAL MUSIC BY

Gil Talmi and Tom Zylbersztein

ART DIRECTOR

Kia Simon

CO-PRODUCER | ARCHIVAL PRODUCER
POST-PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR

Loi Ameera Almeron

CO-PRODUCERS

Yves Averous
Jeremey Lavoi | Abby Berendt Lavoi
Matthew Clarke | Dylan Thomas Collingwood
Malgorzata Koziol
Benjamin H. Berkowitz

A production of 13th Gen (San Francisco) in association with Lavoi Creative (New Orleans), Tilt9 Entertainment (Vancouver), and East Beast (Warsaw).

This film has been supported by grants from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and Jewish Story Partners, and through the Jewish Film Institute’s Filmmaker Residency.

Fiscal sponsorship provided by the National Center for Jewish Film.

SONG LYRICS • ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Dos Elnte Kind (The Lonely Child)

Who’s chasing me — who?
And leaves me no peace?
Oh mother, my mother dear,
Where are you, where?
Your Sorele seeks you,
Your child’s crying out
Howling and wailing like wind in the grass.
My father is missing,
Who knows where he’s gone?
He was caught in a trap by a terrible foe.

The night was so dark, when this happened to him,
Still darker than night was my dear mother’s face.
All day she wanders, all evening she roams.
All through the restless night, the child worries on.
She hears in her mind her father’s close footsteps,
Her mother still rocks her and sings her this song.
If it happens some day that a mother you’ll be,
you must make your children aware of our pain.
How your father and mother suffered under the enemy.
Forget not the past, not for one single day!