In Darkness, a 2011 Polish Holocaust movie, takes us into the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov to experience the life each individual had to endure during these bloody times. Based on a true story, the director of the movie says her goal is to make viewers feel like they’re in the sewer with along the movies characters.
Leopold Socha, (Robert Więckiewicz), a sewer worker living in the city of Lvov, witnesses that mass terror that spreads around country in the wake of the Holocaust. As Jews are being rounded up by the dozens, Socha, a shrewd business man, realizes there is a dollar to be made in helping hide these Jew offenders.
Encountering a group of Jews escaping the liquidation of the ghetto, he barters shelter in the sewers for money, mostly focused on the profit and little on the safety of his new business partners. But as things at the surface begin to turn deadly, Socha begins to understand the desperation these innocent people feel, sparking a sense of humanity that seeks to help save these men, women, and children from imminent death.
Directed by Agnieszka Holland, the movie has officially been named as the Polish entry for the Best Foreign Film Award at the 84th Annual Academy Awards in two weeks. With rage reviews from critics on all sides, In Darkness has been hailed as, “Not just another Holocaust movie”, taking us farther into the spectrum of this bloody time period.
Rebecca Wang Entertainment 