Liza and Walter are crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner. He doesn’t know that she was with the SS and served as a guard at Auschwitz. But Marta, who is also on this ship, knows – because she was a prisoner in Auschwitz, and was maltreated by Liza…
Andrzej Munk died during the shooting of Passenger, and Witold Lesiewicz finished the film in an absolutely staggering way: by narrating the cruise parts almost exclusively through still pictures – and connecting these with Munk’s demise. In fact, at the beginning, we see mainly production shots, with Munk on the ocean liner, blurring the boundaries between documentary essay and fiction – befitting for a film about memories, true and false. Could this arguably most devastating film ever to tackle the horrors of the concentration camps be as epochal and axiomatic if it didn’t feel so fragmentary, as unfinished as the history it brings alive?
Film details
Productieland
Poland
Jaar
1963
Festivaleditie
IFFR 2019
Lengte
62'
Medium/Formaat
35mm
Taal
Polish
Première status
None
Director
Andrzej Munk, Witold Lesiewicz
Screenplay
Andrzej Munk, Zofia Posmysz-Piasecka
Sound design
Jerzy Szawlowski
Sales / World rights holder
Studio Filmowe KADR
Production company
Zespol Filmowy Kamera
Cinematography
Krzysztof Winiewicz
Editing
Zofia Dwornik
Production design
Tadeusz Wybult
Music
Tadeusz Baird
Principal cast
Aleksandra Śląska, Anna Ciepielewska, Jan Kreczmar, Marek Walczewski, Irena Malkiewicz, Barbara Horawianka, Maria Koscialkowska