VATICAN CITY (RNS) — “Triumph of the Heart,” a new film about St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who gave his life in Auschwitz, brings cinematic heft to Catholic storytelling while confronting timeless questions of faith, sacrifice and resistance to tyranny.
The film — on view in U.S. theaters on Sept. 12 as a one-night nationwide event — focuses on the last days of Kolbe’s life in late 1941 in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Portraying historical events, after a prisoner escaped, deputy SS camp Commander Karl Fritzsch picked 10 prisoners at random to be starved to death in an underground bunker. When Kolbe heard one of the condemned, the Polish Catholic Franciszek Gajowniczek, weep for his wife and children, he offered himself instead.
“(The movie) raises the issues of hope and despair, of love and sacrifice,” said executive producer Marcellino D’Ambrosio, a Catholic author and speaker, in an interview with Religion News Service. “How can you believe in God in the midst of this hell? Those are perennial questions.
“This story will always be relevant because it hits fundamental human issues,” he added.
Fritzsch, portrayed by British actor Christopher Sherwood, allows Kolbe, played by Polish actor Marcin Kwasny, to …