Agnieszka Holland will attend the screening. Robert Wieckiewicz also stars in Courage.
Agnieszka Holland, one of Poland’s pre-eminent directors, has made a work that stands as one of her supreme achievements. In Darkness deals with something that has been difficult to reconcile within the war experience for many people: the Catholic-Jewish tension that cuts like a knife through Polish society. Conventional wisdom has it that, under Nazi rule, the natural anti-Semitism of Catholic Poland rose to the fore. Holland sets out to emphatically and majestically explore and undermine this particular view.
During the war, numerous Jews hid in the underground sewer systems of the major cities. Based on a true story, In Darkness portrays this subterranean life through the experiences of Lvov sewer worker Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) and the people he meets on his rounds. What gives the film grit, urgency and complexity is the fact that Leopold is Catholic, and initially as anti-Semitic as they come. He also knows that any contact with Jews, let alone the help that he gives them, jeopardizes his life and that of his wife and child.
What makes this film so remarkable is the manner in which he is confounded by his own prejudices, and the equally complex way that Holland portrays the Jewish characters. This is a self-portrait of mankind, magisterial and Shakespearean in its grasp of what we are capable of doing to – and for – each other. - Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival