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, Barry Levinson’s “The Survivor” may be another title on the endless list of films that struggling to depict the atrocities of concentration camps, but it’s one of the few that would have been dramatically improved by not depicting them at all. Unequal parts “Raging Bull” and Peter Solan’s “The Boxer and Death” — better known by its needless American remake “The Triumph of the Spirit” — Levinson’s biopic tells the brutal story of a strapping Polish kid named Hertzko Haft (Ben Foster), who avoided the gas chambers of Jaworzno by sending dozens of other Jewish men there in his place.

By the time the Soviet Red Army swept through the area in 1945, Haft had won 76 of the life-or-death boxing matches staged for the Nazi guards’ amusement, and upon arriving in New York he naturally parlayed his gifts as a pugilist into something of a career. The war was over,...

The story revolves around real-life boxing champion Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski, who won a title in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Just days before the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, shooting for Maciej Barczewski’s Champion has ended on a film set in the former Nazi death camp. Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski arrived there as part of the first mass transportation of prisoners, on 14 June 1941. He was a soldier and a gym teacher, but first and foremost, he was a brilliant boxer who fought over 40 times during his imprisonment. Teddy defeated both German and Dutch champions and was deported from Auschwitz in 1943. He survived World War II and died in 1991. In 1962, Slovak director Peter Solan also made a film based on Teddy’s biography (The Boxer and Death). The 2020 film is the feature debut by Polish helmer Barczewski, who, in a press release, called Teddy “a...

Romania was the big winner at Vilnius’ Kino Pavasaris (Cinema Spring) festival with Tudor Cristian Jurgiu’s feature debut Japanese Dog was named Best Film in the New Europe - New Names competition.

A Romanian producer present in Vilnius expressed the hope that this latest success - after winning veteran actor Viktor Rebengiuc a Gopo Award in Bucharest last month - would spur his national film fund Cnc on to showing more support for its filmmakers.

However, Romania’s filmmaking community is still waiting in vain for the Cnc to announce the results of its latest competition for funding of film projects.

Awards for Blind Dates, Ida

The competition jury of Japanese actress Kaori Momoi, Latvian film-maker Laila Pakalnina, and festival programmers Verena von Stackelberg, Ludmila Cvikova and Dimitris Kerkinos, gave their Best Director statuette to Levan Koguashvili’s Blind Dates.

The acting honours went to Igor Samobor, the new teacher in Rok Bicek’s Class Enemy, and...

Above: 1960 poster by Jerzy Flisak for Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1957)

One of my favorite Polish poster designers, or indeed favorite poster designer from any country, is Jerzy Flisak (1930-2008). Incredibly prolific—I’ve seen maybe 200 Flisak movie posters and he made many more during his 30 year career—Flisak started out as a satirical cartoonist. A cheerful, simple, almost childlike style is evident in much of his work, which tends towards the bright, bold and colorful, often peopled with rosy cheeked buxom ladies. Much of that work is terrific and quite well known—like his posters for The Fireman’s Ball and Paper Moon—but what draws me to Flisak is his work that pulls in the opposite direction: towards the more serious, abstract and monochrome. Before Flisak was a cartoonist he had studied architecture and there is a very strong sense of structure, space and form in his work.