A documentary by Vadim Jendreyko. In Russian and German with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays Friday to Thursday, November 26 to December 2, at the Vancity Theatre

The pachyderms in The Woman With the 5 Elephants were not born in Africa but in the brain of Russia’s greatest writer. Quite simply, they are Feodor Dostoyevsky’s five major novels. Not that Vadim Jendreyko is particularly concerned with this 19th-century genius, however. Instead, he focuses his documentary attentions on the life and times of Svetlana Geier, the most recent translator of these “elephants” into German, as well as a personal witness to several forms of “crime and punishment”.

Born in Kiev in 1923, Svetlana Geier’s life was turned upside down when her father was arrested by Stalin’s secret police. Although he was ultimately released—one of less than a thousand to enjoy such deliverance among millions of victims—he still succumbed to the wounds he’d incurred during his incarceration. Then the Nazis invaded Ukraine, the Jews were massacred at Babi Yar, and Svetlana, improbably, started enjoying a bit of good luck (although most of the Germans who helped her out ultimately paid dearly for not treating her like a “typical Slav”). Eventually, she moved to Germany, where she founded a large family and gradually became known as the greatest local translator of the Russian classics.

More than half of The Woman With the 5 Elephants is concerned with Svetlana’s first visit to Kiev in 65 years. Accompanied only by her granddaughter, and preoccupied by terrible injuries suffered by one of her sons, she nonetheless tries to put her life into some sort of perspective (occasionally sounding like a Dostoyevskian starets in the process). Although there are certain aspects of her story that move by a little too quickly, for the most part this is a fair and honest portrait of one of the grand masters of a difficult but undervalued craft.