Applause for 'non-fiction' Warsaw Rising movie

Jan Komasa, who championed the idea of the footage being made into a feature film. Photo: PAP/Grzegorz Jakubowski

Warsaw Rising was cut from six hours of original material made by the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of Poland's chief wartime underground force the Home Army (AK).

The producers of the film discovered that two brothers were among the camera operators throughout the two-month insurgency, and this has become the key plot device of the film.

Besides colouring the black and white footage, producers employed lip readers to decipher dialogue, while new texts were written to evoke the relationship between the two brothers.

Film still (Warsaw Rising Museum)

The Dziennik Polski daily commented that the film “grips the viewer by the throat” from the outset.

Jan Oldakowski, director of the Warsaw Rising Museum (which co-financed the film), stressed that “this is not a movie for everyone” on account of some of carnage captured on camera.

Warsaw Rising goes on general release on 9 May, and the driving force behind the project, Jan Komasa (pictured), said that the experience of working on the footage has fed into his forthcoming movie City 44 (Miasto 44), which will have its premiere on 1 August this year, marking the 70th anniversary of the rising.

At the outbreak of the insurgency, Polish partisans were equipped to fight for about a week unaided, but help from supposed allies the Russians was not forthcoming, in spite of earlier pledges.

The rising lasted for two months before the AK capitulated. Some 200,000 Poles died – mostly civilians – and a Soviet-backed communist regime was ultimately installed in Poland after the war. (nh)

Source: PAP