Samuel Goldwyn Company has acquired North American rights to Sobibor, Russia’s entry for the foreign-language film Oscar.
“Sobibor” screened at the 2018 Cannes Film Fest market.
The film is about a real-life revolt in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. The rebellion and mass escape, led by a Soviet officer, Alexander Pechersky, took place in Sobibor in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. There have been several treatments of the story for both the big and small screens.
The film from Russia is the feature-directing debut of actor Konstantin Khabensky (“Wanted,” “Night Watch,” “Day Watch,” “Trotsky”), who also plays the lead role.
Christopher Lambert plays the head of the Nazi camp.
According to Khabensky, it’s the kind of film that “speaks best to audiences who are open to emotionally accept things that are not easy to accept.”
Though set in the past, the film is relevant today, because “humanity hasn’t learned its lessons yet,” Khabensky told Variety.
