Korczak [NTSC]

Korczak is a biopic of Jan Korczak (played by Wojciech Pszoniak), a highly respected children’s doctor and author of children’s books in Poland who earned the status of a saint after he accompanied 300 Jewish orphans to the gas chamber in Treblinka. Set in Warsaw between 1936-42, “Korczak” reveals the rise of German occupation within the city and the segregation of Jews from non-Jews. The degradation of Jews within the city-streets at the hands of the Germans is harrowing, and heightened by the use of archive newsreel footage. Korczak establishes an orphanage for the city’s lost Jewish children and works to protect them against the encroaching threat of Nazi Germany. He is revealed to be a man of enormous compassion, with a ceaseless capacity to nurture and provide, and the ultimate selflessness to accompany the children to their inevitable death. Evocatively shot in black and white by Robby Muller, with a script by Agnieszka Holland and directed by established Polish director, Andrzej Wajda, “Korczak” is a deeply moving story about the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust and the choice to face racial discrimination and genocide with dignity and resolve. The film’s finale, however, provides one of the most magical sequences in the history of cinema. In Polish with English subtitles. Cast includes Wojciech Pszoniak, Ewa Dalkowska.