SAVE ONE LIFE. SAVE THE WORLD.

Many have seen the clip from a 1980s British talk show where one of the guests is surprised to learn that everybody in the audience surrounding him are people he helped save from the Nazis when they were children.

This is the story of that man, Nicholas Winton, who in 1938 was a stockbroker visiting Czechoslovakia and becoming increasingly involved in a challenging mission to save Jewish children by train, under British protection. The film takes us back and forth between that period and the late 1980s, where an elderly Winton feels that he never did enough.

Quite a tearjerker, with a gripping lead performance.

2023-U.K.-Czech Republic-Australia-U.S. 110 min. Color. Directed by James Hawes. Screenplay: Lucinda Coxon, Nick Drake. Book: Barbara Winton (”If It’s Not Impossible… The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton”). Cast: Anthony Hopkins (Older Nicholas Winton), Johnny Flynn (Younger Nicholas Winton), Helena Bonham Carter (Babi Winton), Lena Olin, Jonathan Pryce, Romola Garai, Marthe Keller.

Trivia: In the film’s climactic scene, many of the extras in the studio audience are actual children of people that Winton saved. 

Last word: “Having Tony and Jonathan on the same day was exhausting, because they’re both Welsh and they spent most of the day arguing about which one of them was more Welsh than the other: The one from the north, or the one from the south? [Laughs.] When I told Tony that we’d cast Jonathan, he said, ‘Oh god! He’s been given a knighthood since I saw him last, he’s going to be unbearable.’ There’s a level of banter and level of fun, and then you just have two absolute greats that give you the lightness and the comedy of that particular scene.” (Hawes, Oscars.org)