SHTTL is the story of the inhabitants of a Yiddish-speaking, Ukrainian village at the border of Poland, 24 hours before the Nazi invasion, known as Operation Barbarossa. A Jewish filmmaker returns from Kyiv, Ukraine to his rural village to marry the love of his life. He is expected to marry the Rabbi’s daughter, which disrupts the balance of the whole town.

The film portrays the conflict between the secular, modern world and the traditional, religious environment. In one unflinching shot, this film presents a day in the life of a Jewish village before it disappears. With its focus on life rather than death, it is a tribute to those who perished. 

Today, there are no such villages in existence.  The filmmakers fully reconstructed a traditional ‘Shtetl’ outside of Kyiv. Following the filming, the set was to be turned into a museum but was destroyed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.