Polish soldier and spy Witold Pilecki is getting the big-screen treatment via an international co-production between the United States and Poland.
Powder Hound Pictures and the Polish Film Institute have teamed up to finance and co-produce what is being titled Enemy Of My Enemy and being described as an epic drama.
Matt King wrote the script that adapts the acclaimed book Ochotnik (“The Volunteer”) by Marco Patricelli.
Jayne-Ann Tenggren, who acted as a producer on the Oscar-winning war drama 1917 and who was a protégé of Sam Mendes, is producing with Elizabeth Stillwell, who acted as an executive producer on 2018 Kristen Stewart period drama Lizzie.
A soldier with the Polish Army in World War II, Pilecki volunteered for a Polish resistance operation that involved infiltrating (and later escaping from) the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1941, he penned what some say was the first comprehensive intelligence report on Auschwitz and the Holocaust, only to see it ignored by the Allied powers.
He was a co-founder of Nazi resistance group the Secret Polish Army and a fighter in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Any notions of being considered a hero were tossed when he was arrested in 1947 by Poland’s new communist government which charged him with working for foreign governments. After a show trial, he was executed in 1948.
His story was largely buried for decades but resurfaced when communism fell. Historians and writers fell for his larger-than-life actions, as did filmmakers. In 2020, Austrian filmmaker Feo Aladag (When We Leave) was developing a biopic on Pilecki titled The Inconvenient Truth.
Tenngren and Stillwell are working with a local production team as well as Pilecki’s family, conducting extensive research for the project. The project does not currently have a director.
“I was thrilled to read the script and to be working with the filmmakers,” said great-grandson Krzysztof Kosior in a statement. “I am grateful this film is being made and that a global audience will know my great-grandfather’s story.”
While still early days, the producers believe the project could be the largest of its kind in Poland and is using the cooperation of public and private resources. They also hope to shoot in Poland and Italy.
Borys Kit
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