What if your past cruelties smiled back at you from across a cruise deck?
A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.
Direction
Munk's incomplete masterpiece finished posthumously. Every cut feels haunted.
Editing
Jarring flashback structure mirrors fractured memory and denial.
Writing
Screenplay by Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz-Piasecka.
Director
Andrzej Munk
Aleksandra Śląska
Liza
Anna Ciepielewska
Marta
Janusz Bylczyński
Capo
Barbara Horawianka
Nurse
Anna Jaraczówna
Capo
Maria Kościałkowska
Guard Inga Weniger
Andrzej Krasicki
Commission Member
Jan Kreczmar
Walter
Irena Malkiewicz
Oberaufseherin Madel
Izabela Olszewska
Prisoner
Leon Pietraszkiewicz
Lagerkommandant Grabner
Kazimierz Rudzki
Commission Member
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
One of the first Polish films to directly confront Auschwitz, made during a thaw in communist censorship. The Polish Film School movement used this to push formal boundaries.
Andrzej Munk died in a car crash in 1961 with only rough footage assembled. Witold Lesiewicz completed it as a 'finished fragment,' keeping the gaps visible rather than smoothing them over.
PL
