This hour-long documentary film based on Salvaged Pages presents the diaries of young people who endured the Holocaust as refugees, in hiding, and in ghettos throughout Europe. Using archival still and moving footage, personal photos, artwork, and documents from children who survived or their family members, and entries from the diaries themselves, the film tells the story of a group of brave, young writers who refused to quietly disappear. 

The film, directed by Oscar-nominated director Lauren Lazin and written by Alexandra Zapruder, aired on MTV in the spring of 2005 and was screened at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Television and Radio in New York City, The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C., among many others.  The film is scored by Moby, and introduced by Zach Braff.  The diaries are read by some of today’s most talented young actors including Elijah Wood, Ryan Gosling, Kate Hudson, Brittany Murphy and Joaquin Phoenix among others. Original footage was shot in Vilnius, Lithuania in the remnants of the old Jewish ghetto.  

The film was generously funded by MTV, Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons’ Foundation, The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation and The Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation. 

AWARDS

Winner of the 2005 Jewish Image Award for Television Special 

Nominated for Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Programming in News and Documentaries - Long Form 

Nominated for Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Editing, (Richard Calderon, editor) 

PRAISE FOR I’m Still Here

“I’m Still Here,” [is] inventive and inspired…[telling] the stories of its principals using skillfully manipulated photographs and drawings from their diaries….[It is] a masterly documentary and proof that there are still more and decent ways to remember the Holocaust.”  —The New York Times

“Valuable for anyone of any age ... lack of sentimentality and fearlessness in facing unspeakable crimes.” —Chicago Tribune

“A number of programs will remember the Holocaust this week, but none more powerful than “I’m Still Here,” a documentary produced and scheduled by MTV, a network we don’t automatically associate with such serious themes, for a youth audience that probably most needs to be reminded of what the Nazis did…”  —Newsday

“The teenage victims’ courage will leave viewers haunted…”  —Entertainment Weekly

“A haunting documentary….gives us a sense of what the world lost when these lives were cut short.”  —People Magazine