Roman Polanski revisits his childhood, marked by the Holocaust, in a documentary boycotted in theaters

Reduced to two rooms, the output of Walk to Krakow, a documentary about Roman Polanski’s childhood under the Nazi occupation, goes badly. Accused of rape by several women, the Franco-Polish director is still the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the United States since he fled the country after being prosecuted for rape of a minor.

On the screens of L’Arlequin in Paris and the Omnia Cinéma in Rouen on Wednesday July 5, Walk in Krakow was boycotted by theater managers, fearing public order disturbances. “Operators are cautious and not very brave“, considers Sophie Dulac, owner of the Harlequin convinced of “movie quality”.

Childhood friend

The reproaches denouncing the visual qualities of Walk in Krakow, which would lend itself more to broadcast on television rather than in theaters, are hypocritical. Many French fiction films screened in the cinema can just as much feel targeted. For his part, Polanski is not at the origin of the film, and at any time took the film in hand. On the other hand, the directors, Mateusz Kudla and Anna Kokoszka-Romer, offered him to evoke in Krakow his childhood spent in Poland, on the occasion of his visit to the country. He accepted on the condition of doing it with his friend Ryszard Horowitz, who had become a photo star, with whom he lived his early youth there.

Crossing paths from time to time in the capitals of the world that they visit for their work, they had never returned together to Krakow since the Second World War. Mateusz Kudla and Anna Kokoszka-Romer carried out a meticulous investigation before reuniting them, to find the places of the old ghetto where they lived, and from which they escaped for supply missions in the city. Until the departure of Roman, placed with two successive families in the countryside, for his safety.

He made his ancestors recognized among the Righteous

The emotion in the simplicity of this reunion between friends and with the past runs through the film. On the website of First, Sophie Dulac denounces the comments made by AFP to French Film, the bible of the profession, arguing that the film addresses the director’s setbacks with the law, which is totally false. Has anyone seen the film in the room?

Still, on screen, 90-year-old Roman Polanski is in great shape, with his bouncing gait in the streets of Krakow and country lanes, accompanied by his friend Horowitz, who is also very cheerful. Emotion when Polanski sees the kitchen where he found his father after the war, his mother and grandmother having been murdered in the gas chamber as soon as they got off the train at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. Mateusz Kudla and Anna Kokoszka -Romer have found the grandson of the second protectors of Roman Polanski as a child. The director took steps to have his ancestors recognized among the Righteous who helped the Jews against the Nazis, which he obtained.

The sheet

Gender : Documentary
Director : Mateusz Kudla and Anna Kokoszka-Romer
Actors: Roman Polanski and Ryszard Horowitz
Country : France / Poland
Distributer : ARP Selection
Duration : 1h15
Exit : July 5, 2023

Synopsis : This documentary follows Roman Polanski in the city where he lived as a child, in the company of his lifelong friend, photographer Ryszard Horowitz, survivor of the Holocaust, whom he met in the Jewish ghetto of Krakow during the Second World War. Together, they walk the streets and confront their memories…