We first meet Jan Wiener in Lenox, Massachusetts, where the 77-year old is pummeling a boxing bag in his garage. "Boxing taught me to take a blow and get up," he growls, between punches. "Its very similar to life - you have to keep to rules that are strict."

FIGHTER accompanies Jan and his good friend Arnost Lustig on a visit to Europe. Jan revisits the office of the Czech collaborator who, during World War II, granted him an exit visa but told him not to expect to live long enough to wear out more than one pair of shoes.

From that moment on, Jan was determined to survive and return to Prague to get revenge on this man for humiliating him. And, after the War he did return. He returned to the same office, found the collaborator, put a gun to his head, and reminded him of his treatment of Jews six years earlier.

While asking Jan about this episode Arnost alludes to the subsequent communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and quite unexpectedly, Jan confronts Arnost: "How can you say that when you were part of the same goddam murderous organization?" But the two men find common ground when they visit Terezin, the ghetto and adjoining concentration camp where Arnost spent his formative years, and where the Nazis murdered Jan's mother.

Retracing the steps of Jan's escape, Jan returns for the first time to the house in Slovenia where his father committed suicide in 1941. Next they travel to Trieste, where Jan stowed under a locomotive and spent 18 hours under the toilet hole, clutching an excrement-slicked steel plate just over the train's wheels.

By the time they arrive in Cosenza, Italy, Jan is gripping so tightly to his past that the present can only disappoint him. One after another the people whom he visits tell him that they don't remember him. The husband of a former girlfriend humiliates him; the POW camp from which Jan also escaped is overrun with weeds. The world that he remembers from his youth is gone.

"Brilliant!"—The New Yorker

"Enthralling! Ponders in a refreshingly original way unanswerable questions about memory, history and that elusive thing we call truth."—The New York Times

"A profoundly affecting, and essential, addition to the cannon of wartime histories."—New York Daily News

"Powerful, provocative and often funny, this may be the year's outstanding documentary!"—New York Post

"An intimate collection of postwar memories, FIGHTER is a powerful, heartfelt and funny documentary. Director Amir Bar-Lev's feature debut gracefully ... provides many uplifting moments that will touch even the most cynical viewer!"—Variety

"A Stroke of genius! Novelistic scope and dialectical edge distinguish FIGHTER.... Unlike most survivor memoirs, which are basically monologues, FIGHTER takes the form of a dialogue between two men who, because of the radical difference between their personalities and specific experiences, bring divergent perspectives to a shared history of grief. Their on-camera arguments and reconciliations reveal the life force that helped them survive (although nothing helped so much as luck) and give a dramatic structure to the dialectic between past and present."—The Village Voice

"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. [An] excellent production... This award-winning production had no perceived flaws. The picture quality was very professional. The sound was clear with voices easy to understand and the music well-suited to the scenes depicted and not overwhelming... for those wishing a first-hand account of some (to us) little-known aspects of the Holocaust, the Second World War, and Communism, this excellent production is highly recommended."—MC Journal: the Journal of Academic Media Librarianship

"A compelling narrative... grippingly illuminate[s] the twists of history and the strains of friendship. A fascinating complement to any history collection."—Library Journal