Director: Maciej Barczewski
Writer: Maciej Barczewski (Screenplay)
Starring: Piotr Glowacki, Jan Szydlowski, Grzegorz Malecki, Marcin Bosak, Marcin Czarnik, Marek Kasprzyk
Plot: The story of the pre-war boxing champion Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski, who in 1940 arrives with the first transport of prisoners to the newly created Auschwitz concentration camp.
Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: The Champion of Auschwitz starts we meet Tadeusz Pietrzykowski known as Teddy (Glowacki) a former boxing champion in Poland, who has found himself in the dreaded Auschwitz concentration camp. Teddy, taking some of the other prisoners including Janek (Szydlowski) under his wing gets put in an interesting position.
Teddy is offered a chance to fight the Nazi selected fighters in an exchange for more food, food he shares with the other prisoners, offering the Nazi’s an entertainment front, even if he knows of the truth about what is happening there.
Thoughts on The Champion of Auschwitz
Thoughts – The Champion of Auschwitz is one of the more difficult movies to watch, not because of the quality we are seeing, but the subject matter Any film set in Auschwitz or any of the concentration camps during the war is a difficult watch when you know the horrors that took place there. Seeing how one man got a chance to become the entertainment to survive in the boxing ring, did show how outside of the bloodshed, the entertainment beliefs weren’t much different between the prisoners and the guards, showing a sport can bring together people no matter what. The difficult side of this film to watch is how the Nazis would make the spectacle of what they were doing to the prisoners trying to take the fight Teddy had left in him. Piotr Glowacki is fantastic in the leading role of the film, showing just how broken he could become, without giving up in this world. This is another story from war, one that will show the suffering at the time,
The Champion of Auschwitz will be available in UK Cinemas from 3rd September
Final Thoughts – The Champion of Auschwitz is a hard hitting story of what was happening in the concentration camp, with the glimmer of hope for a boxing champion.
