My Yiddish Papi
2017 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Éléonore Goldberg
Genres: animation, biography, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Haunted by guilt after missing her grandfather's final phone call, a young woman honours a childhood promise by illustrating his wartime adventures in the French Resistance.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Grief + illustration + Resistance mythology sounds like a Hallmark card, and yet Goldberg somehow resists every easy move—the wartime stories don't sentimentalize, the animation doesn't sweeten the guilt. It's almost frustratingly restrained for what could've been a tear-jerker.
A masterclass in structural restraint: the parallel editing between present-day illustration and grandfather's testimony creates a formal dialogue about memory and witness that situates itself squarely in the animation-essay tradition while honoring Jewish documentary ethics. The measured pacing proves that intimacy doesn't require crescendo.
The decision to let the grandfather's *voice* carry the war stories while her hand moves across the page in real time—that specific choice of performer-and-illustration sync over flashy recreation—does everything: it's economical, it's intimate, and it makes you believe in her promise to him.