Nazi-occupied Lvov, Poland, 1943: the weak prey upon the weaker, the poor steal from the less poor. No one can be trusted Leopold Socha, a sewer worker and petty thief, struggles to make ends meet for his wife and daughter. His friend, Bortnik, a high-living Ukrainian Officer, dangles the promise of a better life: all Socha has to do is find Jews hiding in the sewers. After all, no one knows the system better than Socha, who uses it as a hiding place for his loot.
Soon enough, Socha comes across a motley group of Jews trying to escape the upcoming liquidation of the Lvov ghetto by hiding in the sewers. They offer Socha money to protect them. Although he is aware that helping a Jew could mean immediate execution for him and his family, Socha sees this as easy cash and they strike a deal.
One of the group, Mundek Margulies, a con man who hides deep reserves of courage under a breezy manner, deeply distrusts Socha. Nevertheless, when the Nazis strike, Socha helps the Jews, including two young children, escape into the sewers.
Socha’s challenges are just beginning, as he tries to stay one step ahead of Bortnik’s growing suspicions that he is hiding a secret. Before long, his fragile tightrope begins to fray. His charges start to crack under the immense strain of life underground. Socha weighs the money he’s receiving against the threat of certain death to himself and his family. Buckling under the pressure, he abandons them.
However, powerful circumstances intervene. Socha saves Mundek’s life by helping him kill a German soldier. Then, stumbling upon the two children wandering lost and dazed in the sewers, he realizes that he cannot desert these people.
Director’s Statement
2009 brought a number of new Holocaust stories in books and films. One may ask if everything has now been said on this subject. But in my opinion the main mystery hasn’t yet been resolved, or even fully explored. How was this crime (echoes of which continue in different places in the world from Rwanda to Bosnia) possible? Where was Man during this crisis? Where was God? Are these events and actions the exception in human history or do they reveal an inner, dark truth about our nature?
Exploring the many stories from this period uncovers the incredible variety of human destinies and adventures, revealed in the richest texture of plots and dramas, with characters that face difficult moral and human choices, exercising both the best and the worst in human nature.
One of those stories is Leopold Socha and the group of Jews from Lvov’s Ghetto, whom he hides in the city’s sewers. The main character is ambiguous: seemingly a good family man, yet a petty thief and a crook, religious and immoral at the same time, perhaps an ordinary man, living in terrible times. During the story Socha grows in many ways as a human being. There is nothing easy or sentimental in his journey. This is why it’s fascinating; it’s why we can make this journey with him.
The group of Jews he saves is not made of angels. The fear, the terrible conditions, their own selfishness make them complex and difficult, sometimes unbearable human beings. But they are real and alive, and their imperfections give them a stronger claim to their right to life than any idealized version of victims could.
I immediately liked the story, liked the potential of it, the characters, and the script.
The biggest and the most exciting challenge for me as a filmmaker was the darkness. They live in the dark, stink, wet and isolation for over a year. We knew we had to express it, to explore this underground world in a very special, realistic, human and intimate way. We wanted the audience to have the sensual feeling of being there. And to maintain tension as the viewer slowly becomes attached to the story. The dynamic of the film is built on inter-cutting the worlds of the two leads, Socha and Mundek. These two worlds come together to be one, in which they must work together to survive.
Production Background
It took one sentence in a Toronto newspaper to start an eight-year journey that took me to the sewers of Lviv, Ukraine (Lvov, Poland during World War II), a bitterly cold set at the legendary Babelsberg Studio just outside Berlin and a dark editing room in Toronto. It also took me into the darkest recesses of human history.
The article was about The Righteous, Sir Martin Gilbert’s book that cataloged those incredibly courageous individuals who risked not only their own lives, but the lives of their families, by helping Jews escape the clutches of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The galvanizing sentence went something like this: “A Polish Catholic thief hid a group of Jews in the sewers of Lvov, which he knew well because that was where he hid his loot and actually got a job as a sewer worker.” I immediately wanted to know more about this person because the sentence raised so many questions, chiefly: what makes a criminal, or anyone for that matter, risk his life and his family’s to help complete strangers? I grasped that there must be a profound emotional, psychological and physical journey that this man undertook.
After I contacted him, Sir Martin very graciously directed me to a whole book about this story, In the Sewers of Lvov by Robert Marshall. Published in 1991 and no longer in print, I managed to purchase the last copy from Amazon. As I read it, the story electrified me because it had every aspect of great drama in it: a flawed hero, nerve-shredding suspense, romance, heartrending tragedy, real characters caught up in a desperate situation. It even had dark comedy: Leopold Socha, the thief and sewer worker, had earlier robbed the jewelry store belonging to the uncle of Paulina Chiger, one of the Jews he was protecting! As a screenwriter, the story was irresistible.
But as the son of parents who had to flee Baghdad to escape Iraq’s persecution of Jews, it also spoke to me on a very deep level. So I personally optioned the film rights to the book and spent the next year researching the era and writing the script ‘on spec’. Early on, I made two very critical choices: I would not sugar-coat any of the Jewish characters – they were all deeply flawed, some of them former con men or black marketers. There were class divisions among them which collided, especially between the upper-class Ignacy Chiger and the rough-hewn Janek Grossman who abandoned his wife and daughter. The second choice was to limit the depiction of the atrocities. There were two reasons for this: audiences are already aware of the extent of the horror and violence, thanks to films like Schindler’s List. The second reason was more mundane: as I did the research, I realized that many of the actual events were too horrifying to even attempt to recreate. In fact, to try would be an act of disrespect.
Actually writing the screenplay presented some other challenges. Not much is known about Leopold Socha the man, so his journey from an opportunist who helped the Jews purely for money to someone who felt compelled to save them at all costs – including the lives of his beloved wife and daughter – had to be dramatized for the audience. Some characters were created while others were eliminated or combined for clarity. Some events were altered or invented. But the main thrust of the story remained intact. As Krystyna Chiger, the only living person who was actually there, said after seeing the film, “You captured it. That’s how it was.”
After I finished the script, a well-known Hollywood director and producer wanted to make it, but I felt strongly that this story should never be ‘Hollywoodized’. A friend in Britain suggested the ideal director: Agnieszka Holland. As a long-term admirer of her work, I knew that he was absolutely right, so I sent her the script through her agent, who never showed it to her (he is no longer her agent!). As it turned out, one of the production companies to which I sent the script was The Film Works, whose principals Eric Jordan and Paul Stephens, had worked with Agnieszka before. I knew that I had found the ideal partners.
But that was just the beginning of what would be another half decade of trying to get the film made. Agnieszka, although very helpful in offering suggestions from the beginning, turned the project down – twice. The key reason was that we – and by now that included the German co-producer Schmidtz Katze Filmkollektiv and the Polish co-producer Zebra Films – insisted that the film be in English. Agnieszka felt equally strongly that the story, which is so rooted in its place and time, should be told in the original languages: Polish, German, Yiddish, Ukrainian, etc. If we wanted her as the director – and we really, really did – the film had to be in those languages. As it turned out, she was absolutely right. Her commitment to authenticity was unwavering: for example, she made sure that the specific dialect of ‘Lvov Polish’ was used.
Working with Agnieszka and the producers, the script went through many drafts. The bane of every screenwriter, especially a relatively inexperienced one, is over-writing. Ms. Holland made sure that didn’t happen. In addition to being a huge privilege, collaborating with her was like getting a PhD in writing for the movies.
The dream of every screenwriter is to see the images that have only resided in his or her imagination appear on the screen. In the case of In Darkness, they actually exploded. Led by Agnieszka, all the other artists, especially the superb cast, poured their hearts and souls into the film, and I think that it shows. Forget about the “glamour of filmmaking”, this was incredibly hard, sometimes backbreaking work. My gratitude to every single person involved is immeasurable.
My main hope is that Leopold Socha’s example will inspire others as much as it has inspired me. Like many of the other Righteous, he was no saint, which is what makes this a universal story. He was just an ordinary man who made some crucial choices that led to extraordinary deeds.
Directed by: Agnieszka Holland
Starring: Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader, Herbert Knaup
Screenplay by: David F. Shamoon
MPAA Rating: R for violence, disturbing images, sexuality, nudity and language.
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: January 27th, 2012
