The Listener is a moving and incisive portrait of psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Dori Laub, whose pioneering practice of “radical listening” reshaped both trauma therapy and the preservation of memory. Beginning in the late 1970s, Laub’s recordings of Holocaust survivors not only safeguarded their stories but also led to the creation of the world’s first video testimony archive—redefining what it means to bear witness.

Spanning the final four years of his life, the film interlaces intimate moments from Laub’s own journey—his childhood in Romanian camps, the mother who saved him, a profound love affair with the daughter of a former Nazi officer—with extraordinary archival testimonies and contemporary echoes. Among them is Edut 710, a project inspired by Laub’s methods to document the voices of survivors of the October 7 Hamas massacre.

Offering a cinematic dialogue with the legacies of Claude Lanzmann and Jean Rouch, The Listener captures Laub’s transformative belief that testimony is not complete without “the intimate and total presence of an other—one who hears.” With unflinching tenderness, the film brings his work out of the therapy room and the archives, making its urgency palpable for audiences today while illuminating listening itself as an act of moral and emotional courage.