In Darkness

Agnieszka Holland directs this acclaimed drama based on the true story of a sewage worker who saved the lives of 14 Jews in the Polish city of Lvov during the Second World War. Leopold 'Poldek' Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), a resolutely anti-Semitic sewer inspector who supplements his meagre government income by trading in stolen goods, discovers a group of Jews hiding from the occupying Nazis in the waste tunnels underneath the city. The group begs him to bring them food and Socha agrees - not from any moral compulsion but because he believes he can charge them an extortionate amount of money for what he brings. However, as time passes and Leopold spends more time with a group of people who come to rely on him for survival, the inspector's misanthropic demeanour appears to undergo a change. Finally, the money begins to run out and Leopold is forced to face up to the kind of moral choice he would have scoffed at in the past.