Irena's Vow

Irena's Vow

Other than beating the tar out of Nazis, the other kind of WWII movies I enjoy are the ones that feature the unsung heroes that were able to rescue small groups of Jewish people. Irena's Vow features Irena Gut, a Polish woman forced into service by the occupying Germans in the city of Tarnopol (now in the Ukraine as Ternopol).

While working for Major Rügemer, she is assigned to supervise the laundry, and then as the housekeeper for his villa, seized from a Polish family. When she saw that all the people in the laundry were to be executed as part of Hitler's plan, she schemes to hide them in the very house that the Major now occupies.

If this wasn't a true story, I wouldn't have believed a word of this. It was so poorly acted, I felt like I was watching a modern film with costumes, instead of a film to transport us back in time to the mad era of Nazi insanity.

It becomes quite clear, sort of, early on that Rügemer has a thing for Irena, but it catapults forward when he discovers that there are Jews hiding in his home. The speed and transformation of superior to inferior to Polish lover was so fast, it just didn't make sense in the narrative.

Sophie Nélisse, as Irena, did a great job of emoting the compassion, the panic, the fear, the horror and the bravery all needed to survive. After witnessing a child get murdered on the street by yet another disgraceful "German", she really dove into her risky plan to save as many Jews as she could.

I wanted to love this due to the bravery in the depths of despair, but it wasn't completely well done. I don't know, nor can I put my finger on it, but I felt it could have been done better. I'm just glad it really happened and the people went on to live full lives. The notes in the credits were really sweet.

Following the success of The Book Thief and Yellowjackets, Sophie Nélisse stars in this powerful and sensitive story based on real events. She plays a young Polish woman, Irena Gut Opdyke (Sophie Nélisse), who during the Second World War, hid a group of Jews in the house of her boss: a high-ranking Nazi commander (Dougray Scott) . Through the eyes of a strong-willed woman comes the remarkable story of Irena Gut, and the triumphs of the human spirit over devastating tragedy, as she risked her life to save a generation of Jews from the atrocities of the Holocaust. Who would look for a group of Jews in a Nazi's house?

Irena's Vow(2023) is a biographic film about Irene Gut Opdyke (1918 - 2003) who was a Polish nurse who gained international recognition for aiding Polish Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. She was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking her life to save twelve Jews.she enrolled at the nursing school before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of 1939. While hiding during the invasion, Russian soldiers discovered her and she was beaten and raped. Originally forced to work in a munitions factory during the German occupation, Gut was hired by Wehrmacht Major Eduard Rügemer to work in a kitchen of a hotel that frequently served Nazi officials when he learned she was fluent in German. The film, which premiered at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, delves into Irene's anguish and fear, her relationship with the commander, as well as the young woman's own will to carry out this heroic act and save the unfortunate people who were relentlessly persecuted. A story of survival and resilience that also spoke of friendship and how, despite the harshness and isolation of life , a good girl helps unfortunate and pursued people at whatever cost. Stories of war survival, particularly the Holocaust, are almost always harrowing and moving, as they require significant effort to faithfully convey the sufferings of Jews who are continually harassed, either in concentration camps or in the dangerous escapes they often made. Those who managed to survive did not remain unscathed, suffering many psychological traumas, often suffering many family losses or personal torture. However, some managed to live to tell their story, which they share with the world to recognize those who disappeared, as well as those who helped them stay alive. Allies and sympathizers also took great risks, resulting in a variety of reasons why they might have refused to be willing to help a Jew hiding from the Nazis.

There is decent photography by cameraman Paul Sarossy, and taking place in war-torn Eastern Europe, the film was shot on location in Konstancin-Jeziorna, Mazowieckie, Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Lublin, Lubelskie, and Modlin, Mazowieckie, Poland. There are no major special effects or war scenes, as it is a story that takes place far from the front, although the Jews do eventually find themselves hunted by greedy Polish bounty hunters who have been promised lavish rewards by the Nazis. But ultimately this is still a story of survival that runs from the beginning of the film to the end. It is also an English-language film, a Canadian/Polish coproduction in origin, despite taking place in occupied Poland, which should make it more accessible to a wider audience.

The motion picture was well directed by Louise Archambault. It will be released in April 2024 and it premiered at TIFF and won an Audience Award at VIFF and WIFF. In 2019, Louise released the feature films, Il pleuvait des oiseaux (And the Birds Rained Down), which won awards such as Best Feature at the Göteborg Film Festival and the comedy Merci pour tout (Thanks for everything). These films ranked 2nd and 3rd position in Canada's box office. Her recent feature Le temps d'un été (One Summer) was released in July 2023 and ranked top 1 Canadian film at the box office, the best Canadian BO since 2019. Rating: 6.5/10.

I have always been a huge supporter and sympathizer of oppressed people all over the world. I will never understand any person's intense hatred and extreme obsession to hurt another based solely on one's race. Thankfully, on the flip side of this evil, we are also inspired by decent people who have displayed heroic acts of courage, morals and good conscience to protect victims in these horrific circumstances. I was immediately drawn into this movie and captivated until the credits rolled by. Sophie Nelisse and the entire cast deliver phenomenal performances. This movie is fraught with drama and suspense and I can't recommend it highly enough!

The street scenes for this were filmed in Lublin old town 4 kilometres from Majdanek concentration camp where my wife's grandmother (Adela) was held as a prisoner for 18 months.

Adela was a nurse in the Polish secret army and was caring for a Polish soldier who was injured when the Gestapo arrived one day in her hometown of Kurów and went to her house and shot the soldier and arrested her.

She was taken to Lublin Gestapo headquarters and tortured for two weeks including being raped multiple times and they broke all of her fingers and her jaw and many of her ribs and was then sent to Majdanek concentration camp.

She died three years ago and after the church service we saw a strange man talking to my father-in-law and after a few mins, we saw that they were both crying and hugging each other.

It turns out that he came from the same town of Kurów and in the war he was very sick and the only available medicine was from the Germans and his mother made the desperate decision to trade the information on Adela for medicine for her son.

Grandmother Adela never spoke about how she was deceived until her death as she knew that the son, his mother and all of her family would be called traitors and could face massive problems in their lives.

She only mentioned the camp a few times in her life as it was too traumatic to speak about, but the times she did speak about it was about the disgusting things the Germans did to the Jews rather reminiscent of the street scene in this film where one German woman guard smashed a baby's head on the floor because it was crying too loud.

I try to understand the hatred between nations of modern times but Grandmother Adela taught us that the hatred should be directed towards the leaders of such terrible conflicts, not the people.

I was proud to name my daughter after her.

Irena is a Polish woman caught in the early stages of Nazi occupation, enlisted to work for the new regime, who after witness to the horrors unleashed against the local Jews, decides to do everything in her power to save the victims. That is her vow. And this is her astounding true story.

Presented more as a theatre piece than movie, "Irena's Vow" seldom moves outdoors, save for a few market square scenes, focusing mainly on interiors, where Irena keeps mansion for a high ranking officer, and keeps a group of Jews hidden in the cellar.

The grit, grime and scuffy realities of war are absent here, as everything focuses on the characters and the carefully orchestrated set pieces. The clean and simple play presentation makes for a distancing film experience, which slowly dissolves as the story picks up the pace. And the story is the star here.

Scrambling to avoid detection under the enemy's roof, Irena shows cool resolve, clever problem solves, and total dedication to her cause. The surface sheen of the movie which never digs far enough to get a good grip on the characters, is finally broken with the post film credits, that feature photos and historic summaries of the aftermath. Then it finally hits home.

• hipCRANK.