A film about great love and sacrifice in an environment of selfishness, struggle for survival, ideological blindness and hatred. A film about the exemplary personality of the Franciscan priest Maximilian Mario Kolbe.

Working and dying prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp finish their shift. Before going to their barracks, however, one of them is buried by a layer of slumping earth. After the guards leave, the prisoner breaks free and escapes from the camp.

Thus begins a whirlwind of events, in which Father Maximilian Kolbe is also caught up. When the Germans discover that a prisoner has escaped from the camp, they start searching for him. After failing to find him, they decide to select 10 men to die in a starvation bunker because of the prisoner’s escape.

When Kolbe sees a desperate, crying man among the selected prisoners, he suggests to the guards that they switch places with him and that they go to the hunger bunker instead.

The prisoner who has escaped is called Hans and finds his first refuge in a Franciscan monastery. Here he stays while the monks arrange false papers for him.

The plot is interspersed with events from Maximilian Kolbe’s life, as recollections of people who knew him and with whom Hans comes into contact. The main storyline lingers on the events of Auschwitz.

The courage and kindness of Maximilian Kolbe, and the very act of sacrifice for another human being as an expression of love, make this film one of the films worth watching. And this despite certain shortcomings.

Parents Guide: The inhumanity and cruelty of the Nazis depicted in the harming of prisoners.

Cast: Christoph Waltz, Artur Barcis, Gustaw Lutkiewicz, Krzysztof Kowalewski, Jerzy Stuhr, Franciszek Pieczka, Jan Peszek, Joachim Król, Henryk Bista, Ryszard Kotys, Marian Dziedziel, Daria Trafankowska, Andrzej Pieczynski, Tadeusz Bradeck

Crew: Krzysztof Zanussi

Poland / Germany, 1991

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