(From right) President Komorowski, First Lady Anna and Cardinal Nycz: photo - PAP/Jacek Turczyk
The premiere of the film, which is tipped for an Academy Award this year by many film critics, was also attended by First Lady Anna Komorowska, Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski, Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz and many prominent film makers.
Director Andrzej Wajda described the film as “extremely moving”.
For director Janusz Zaorski, In Darkness is a work of world-class calibre. Cardinal Nycz commented that it was “moving, thrilling, excellent”.
A joint Polish-German-Canadian production, In Darkness is the gripping true story of Leopold Socha, a Polish sewer worker in Lvov who keeps a group of Jews hidden in the sewers under the noses of the occupying Nazi forces, bringing them food and supplies.
The script, by Canada’s David F. Shamoon, is based on the book In the Sewers of Lvov by Robert Marshall, who was inspired by the memoirs of Ignacy Chiger, one of the Jewish survivors.
His daughter, Krystyna Chiger, who was eight year-old in 1944, described her ordeal in the book The Girl in the Green Sweater, published in 2008.
Director Agnieszka Holland told a press conference after the premiere screening that her intention was to show the characters of the story in all their complexity, with the potential to demonstrate what is both the worst and the best in human nature.
Socha’s transformation, she said. “is neither simple, nor sentimental. The Jews whom he helps are not all angels. They have the right to survive and they do not lose any second to fight for it. Because of this, their story is more heart-breaking than if they were portrayed as idealized victims.”
The film goes on general release in Poland tomorrow and is the Polish candidate for an Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Film category.
In Darkness has already won awards at International Film Festivals in Mar Del Plata, Valladolid, St. Louis and Poland’s Camerimage.
It has also received rave reviews. Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern wrote: “Ms. Holland's brave epic could not be farther from conventional entertainment; Socha's story is singular and superbly dramatic, the evolution of an obtuse anti-Semite into a guardian angel.” (mk/pg)
Lsten to an interview by reporter Michal Kubicki with Krystyna Chiger, whose story the film is based on, here.