Ahead of Time is a feature-length documentary film on the remarkable life of 97-year-old Ruth Gruber. Born in Brooklyn in 1911, Ruth became the youngest PhD in the world at age 20. As a student in Germany in 1931, she attended a Hitler rally observing first-hand the rising tide of Nazism. Ruth became a foreign correspondent and photojournalist at age 24. A feminist before feminism, Ruth was the first journalist to enter the Soviet Arctic in 1935. She traveled to Alaska as a member of the Roosevelt administration in 1941, where she was the first civilian on the Alaska Highway.
Ruth’s unique perspective of the events surrounding WWII is a result of her involvement in many of those historical moments. She was chosen by the Roosevelt administration to escort 1000 Holocaust refugees from Naples to New York in a secret wartime mission in 1944. As a journalist, she accompanied leaders to the Middle East where they studied the problems of displaced persons and Palestine. Ruth covered the Nuremberg trials in 1946 and her photos of the ship Exodus 1947 were published in Life Magazine and around the world. With her love of adventure, fearlessness and powerful intellect, Ruth defied tradition and in the process, emerged as the eyes and conscience of the world. Today, Ruth still has the moxie and sharp wit that propelled her career, and the film interweaves vérité footage with interviews and archival material.
