In Darkness

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  • Opened February 10, 2012 (Limited 2/10)
  • 2 hr 25 min
  • R | Language, Disturbing Images, Nudity, Sexuality and Violence
  • Leopold Socha (Robert Wiêckiewicz,) a sewer worker and petty thief in Lvov, a German-occupied city in Poland, encounters a group of Jews trying to escape the liquidation of the ghetto, and hides them for money in the labyrinth of the town’s sewers beneath the bustling activity of the city above. What starts out as a straightforward and cynical business arrangement turns into something very unexpected, the unlikely alliance between Socha and the Jews, as the enterprise seeps deeper into Socha’s conscience. The film is also an extraordinary story of survival as the men, women and children in hiding all try to outwit certain death during 14 months of ever increasing and intense danger. IN DARKNESS was filmed on location in Poland and Germany as well as Berlin’s Studio Babelsberg where the crew and cast worked in recreated water-filled sewers.
    *Note: Film is presented in Polish/German/Yiddish/Ukrainian with English subtitles. Full synopsis

  • Cast: Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader, Herbert Knaup
  • Director: Agnieszka Holland
  • Genres: Art House/Foreign

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38 fans
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Critics say Go
74 out of 100
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Fan Reviews

Must Go!
In Darkness

by jwagman

One of the most harrowing experiences I have ever had in the movies. A great story told with great cinematic prowess. Not for the fainthearted....

Must Go!
In Darkness

by Peneflix

The movie is assiduous in depicting the deleterious, desultory conditions of life in the sewers: hunger, filth, boredom; rats, initially terrifying, become pets; human nature struggles to prevail:...

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InDarkness

by gene7lakes

Excellent portrayal of an ignoble part of our history-a little depressing to sit through, but especially useful for young people to see what some of us older people were aware of during World War...

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Critic Reviews

100
San Francisco Chronicle
| Mick LaSalle

In Darkness is an extraordinary movie, and somehow good art creates its own uplift. Read full review

91
Entertainment Weekly
| Lisa Schwarzbaum

The fine Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa) pays her respects with a daringly murky-looking movie that demands viewers enter the void too and meet Socha and his Jews as real, flawed men and women behaving in flawed ways under suffocating conditions. Read full review

85
NPR
| Ella Taylor

The elephant in the room of any discussion of Poland and the Jews is that country's less-than-glorious record of betrayal and collaboration with the Nazis. Holland, who is half-Jewish and whose mother was active in the Polish Resistance, doesn't shrink from that legacy. Read full review

80
Wall Street Journal
| John Anderson

What makes this nominee for the best-foreign-film Oscar singular among Holocaust movies is the way it characterizes the banality of life underground. Read full review

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Milla Bankowicz as Krystyna Chiger and Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold Socha in "In Darkness."