Maven's Nest
Reel Life: Flick Pix
Intense time inside Auschwitz with nine Polish political prisoners and a saint
By Nora Lee Mandel
Triumph of the Heart
Written and Directed by Anthony D'Ambrosio
Produced by Cecilia Stevenson
1hr 50mins. Not Rated.
U.S. In English.
With: Marcin Kwasny, Rowan Polonski, Christopher Sherwood, Armand Procacci, Bill Karnovsky, and Oleg Karpenko
Released by Outsider Pictures- opens September 12 in 400+ theaters across U.S.
Triumph of the Heart is an intense time inside Auschwitz before Schindler’s List or The Zone of Interest, before the late 1941 first transports of Jews for extermination. Earlier that year, the Nazis were still running it like they did Dachau in Germany, as a punishment confinement for political prisoners. Here their red triangles had a “P”, for Polish military, unionists, Communists, nationalists, dissidents who were a threat to the Nazi occupation and obliteration of Poland.
American debut filmmaker Anthony D'Ambrosio is inspired by the most famous resistance leader in the camp, priest and journalist Maximilian Kolbe (played by Polish actor Marcin Kwasny). The Deputy Commandant Karl Fritzsch (played by British actor Christopher Sherwood) institutes the collective punishment he had enforced at Dachau when roll call comes up a prisoner short: ten arbitrarily selected men will be locked up in a cellar without food or water until the escapee is found. Kolbe steps forward to replace another. (There’s many other Holocaust survivor stories of such self-sacrifice saving them.)
Most of the film takes place in that cellar over the next 14 days, but we see several of the men’s flashbacks to their earlier or wished for lives (lovely scenes filmed in Poland), that become hallucinations. D'Ambrosio creates the other nine men; they could have been more of a cross-section as we don’t learn too much about most about them. It is difficult to differentiate them, though towards the end each gets a solo portrait. One drops a line that implies he was a labor leader or Communist. There’s a hint that another may be a homosexual. We mostly see the life of young “Albert” (played by Rowan Polonski, an English actor of Polish heritage, who feels he is honoring his grandfather’s travails in the Polish army, albeit against the Russians).
The inclusion of “Heschel” (played by Polish actor Bill Karnovsky) as what would be a nonexistent Jewish political prisoner dents the film’s credibility. That is especially inconvenient as Kolbe rallies spirits by stirring their Polish nationalism intertwined with Catholicism, using hymns and anthems. This is a period when the Polish Church and population were rife with virulent antisemitism, seen in other films based on true stories as is this film, such as Aftermath (Pokłosie). (A spate of Polish films has recently countered that general stance by highlighting those honored at Yad Vashem as the Righteous, such as Irena’s Vow). Their voices are heard outside the cellar and are joined by other prisoners in the camp, infuriating the Deputy Commandant, who carries his anger home to his family.
The prisoners’ ordeal continues, and the ensemble acting is powerful. Some seek confession to the priest and bombastic religiosity ramps up, with an overpowering score by Thomas Farnon, and rising choruses. The producer has also worked on the popular Evangelical Christian series The Chosen. Kolbe was canonized a martyred saint in 1982.
Titled in answer to Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) (1935), hopefully Triumph of the Heart at least helps show that contemporary Ukraine and its Jewish president are not Nazis.
9/9/2025
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
Complete Index to Nora Lee Mandel's Movie Reviews
My reviews have appeared on: FF2 Media; Film-Forward; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
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