How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people.
Captain Witold Pilecki was a Polish intelligence officer during WWII who volunteered for a Polish resistance operation to get imprisoned in the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in order to gather intelligence and enable the Polish government-in-exile to inform the allies about the ongoing Holocaust in occupied Poland. The film also tells the story of Witold Pilecki’s fate at the hands of the Communist government after the end of WWII. The film is a reconstruction of the trial which took place in Warsaw during the communist regime in Poland. Captain Pilecki described his investigation as more cruel than his stay at Auschwitz.
An officer stationed in a remote Ukranian outpost at the end of the First World War is dying of consumption. Suffering from feverish dreams and hallucinations, he begins to collect religious art and attends seances.
