Polish museum seeking private sponsors for WWII courier movie

Award-winning director Władysław Pasikowski ('Jack Strong', 'Aftermath') has already completed a script and he will helm the movie, which has a working title of 'Courier'.

“We are gathering funds, we are talking with [potential] sponsors, because we hope that this film will largely be funded by private sponsors, and not public institutions,” said Jan Ołdakowski, director of the museum.

Jan Nowak was the pseudonym of Zdzisław Jeziorański, a courier for Poland's underground Home Army (AK) during the Second World War.

Born in 1914 into an impoverished noble family, his wartime missions included smuggling information to London, where the Polish government-in-exile was based.

He later took part in the doomed 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Polish capital's Nazi German occupiers. He ultimately escaped to the West, running the Polish section of Radio Free Europe from 1952 to 1976.

Poll

A recent opinion poll by TNS Polska found that 42 percent of Polish respondents did not know who Jan Nowak was.

“A film about Jan Nowak-Jeziorański is needed, and not just because of his remarkable story,” commented Anna Kotonowicz, a spokeswoman for the Warsaw Uprising Museum, “but also due to the mission of the museum, and the desire to remind Poles and bring them closer to – along with the wider world – one of the most important figures of the 20th century.”

The Warsaw Uprising Museum has previously backed the box office hit 'Warsaw 44', Jan Komasa's film about the uprising. (nh/pk)

Source: IAR