‘Eleanor the Great’ is a gently provocative generational comedy-drama that works better than it initially seems it should. At first, the premise feels almost absurdly contrived: a 94-year-old woman, Eleanor (June Squibb), attends a Holocaust support group where she is assumed to be a survivor. She doesn’t quite correct the misunderstanding, and because her recently deceased roommate really did survive Poland in the 1940s, Eleanor begins telling her friend’s story as if it were her own.

What unfolds is a thoughtful film about grief, trauma, and the complicated ethics of storytelling. Eleanor is grieving deeply, and so is Nina (Erin Kellyman), a young journalism student who has recently lost her mother. Nina becomes fascinated by Eleanor’s testimony and wants to document it, believing she has found an extraordinary survivor’s story. Ironically, it is Eleanor – the one living a lie – who ends up receiving counselling, community, and emotional support, raising uncomfortable but compelling questions: Can a morally dubious act still produce something healing? And how do we judge that?

The film plays subtly with biblical ideas, particularly the story of Jacob and Esau, using it to frame the notion of identity borrowed, stolen, or repurposed for survival. Eleanor heard her roommate’s story night after night – neither of them able to sleep – and in retelling it, she keeps her friend alive in some sense. The film suggests that storytelling itself, even when ethically compromised, can have real therapeutic power.

The emotional climax arrives when Eleanor finally has the bat mitzvah she was denied earlier in life – a moment of affirmation that also forces a reckoning with the truth. It’s here that the film confronts its central tension: the necessity of honesty versus the human need for connection, dignity, and healing.

That said, the film arguably stops short of fully interrogating the most troubling question it raises – what it really means to pass oneself off as a victim of genocide, even unintentionally. Still, ‘Eleanor the Great’ remains a warm, thoughtful, and quietly daring film, one that recognises how stories shape identity, memory, and survival – and how blurred the line can be between comfort and deceit.