Filip

Michał Kwieciński's 2023 film is adapted from Leopold Tyrmand's novel, which drew on his own experience. Filip is a young Jewish man who survived the massacre in the Warsaw Ghetto and crossed into Germany on false papers; in 1943 he works as a waiter in the restaurant of an upmarket hotel in Frankfurt. He conceals his identity, passes as French and lives without regard for danger, taking up with German women, boxing, provoking. At the centre of the film is less a survival story than a portrait of rage: the risks Filip takes are not aimed at protecting himself but at proving he has not been defeated. The hotel kitchen is full of forced labourers brought from across Europe, and the film builds that enclosed world in detail. Who it's for: viewers who like Second World War drama and literary adaptation. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a sympathetic, measured protagonist; Filip endangers himself and those around him.