Watch The Woman with the 5 Elephants

This engaging and sometimes jarring feature-length documentary chronicles the story of Svetlana Geier, who passed away in 2010 after expertly translating the works of Dostoyevsky into German with clarity and literary grace. Geier's story places her in a unique position for this task, the five elephants in the film's title referring to the celebrated author's five major novels.

After her father was taken into Stalin's prison camps at a young age, the languages expert was forced to work as a translator from her native Russian to German for the Nazis. Her ability to channel such a harsh life experience into literary work that has introduced German readers to such a wonderful storyteller serves as testament to one woman's resilience.

The Woman with the 5 Elephants is a 2011 documentary with a runtime of 1 hour and 33 minutes. It has received mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 7.6 and a MetaScore of 66.