ONE LIFE film screening
Anthony Hopkins stars in this inspiring true story about a man who rescues hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe.
“A deeply moving portrait of true human goodness,” critic Katie Walsh writes in a Tribune News Service review.
“Not [to] be missed,” Pete Hammond writes in Deadline Hollywood.
“You’d need a heart of stone not to be touched by this extraordinary true story of Nicholas Winton, the ‘British Schindler,’” Peter Bradshaw writes in The Guardian.
The biographical drama tells the incredible story of Winton (Johnny Flynn and later Hopkins), a young London stockbroker who rescued 669 children in Czechoslovakia, most of them Jewish, from the Nazis in the months leading up to World War II.
Winton had visited Prague in December 1938 and saw families and children living in desperate conditions, with little or no shelter or food, amid an impending Nazi invasion.
He decided he must rescue the children right away and send them to safety in Britain.
With time running out before the Nazis invaded and closed the borders, he compiled a list of as many children as he could and found homes for them in Britain.
Yet for decades he was haunted by the fate of the children he was unable to save, always blaming himself for not having done more.
Indeed, his humanitarian achievements went unnoticed by the world until 1988, when the BBC discovered the list and invited Winton to be in the audience of a live TV show called “That’s Life!”
The show’s host spoke on the air about Winton’s work, showed the 50-year-old list and asked if anyone in the audience “owes their life to Nicholas Winton. If so, could you stand up please?”
Unbeknownst to Winton, dozens of the men and women around him — children he had saved — stood up in unison.
The 2023 film, whose awards include the 2024 Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at California’s Palm Springs International Film Festival, runs 1 hour 49 minutes and is rated PG. Its trailer can be found on YouTube at tinyurl.com/OneLife-MoviesWithSpirit.
The screening will be followed by a discussion. Refreshments will be served.
Attendees over age 12 are asked to contribute $10 a person.
Movies With Spirit screenings comply with all federal, state and local health and safety protocols, including those of the screening venues.
