THE LAST WITNESS
PIOTR SZKOPIAK
2023
1 hour 33 min
United Kingdom
English
TRAILER
THE LAST WITNESS is a political thriller based on the harrowing true events of the Katyn Massacre in Spring 1940. In post-WW2 England, ambitious journalist Stephen Underwood (Alex Pettyfer) comes across a disturbing spate of suicides by Polish soldiers. Sensing a story, his first port of call is Colonel Janusz Pietrowski, a Liaison Officer for the re- settlement of Polish troops under British command, but the meeting with Pietrowski leaves Stephen unsettled, and from here his investigation escalates as he finds himself embroiled in a dangerous, multi-layered conspiracy concerning the execution of 22,000 Polish military and civilians by Stalin’s secret police.
DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY – PIOTR SZKOPIAK
Piotr is an experienced director working in feature films, short films and TV Drama. The Last Witness was released in cinemas nationwide in Poland; in selected cinemas and on Digital & DVD in the UK and on Digital & DVD in the US. It has won 44 awards and was selected to screen at film festivals around the world including in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Toronto & Sydney. His first feature film, Small Time Obsession, was released theatrically in the UK with Variety and The Guardian describing him as “a director to watch”. TV drama credits include Waterloo Road, Casualty, Shakespeare & Hathaway – Private Investigators, The Coroner, Heartbeat & Father Brown. Piotr’s work has been nominated for two BAFTA TV Awards. Born and raised in London, he speaks both Polish and English. He is a member of BAFTA.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
Film is an infinite source of new experiences: artistic, entertaining and educational. It allows us access to situations, cultures and eras vastly different from our own, developing our understanding of the human condition and the world at large. My intention as a filmmaker is to tell the kinds of stories that affected me as a child and continue to affect me to this day.
Few situations are ever black or white. As a result, we are all drawn to strong but flawed characters faced with difficult moral choices, forced to make life-changing decisions in potentially overwhelming situations. It makes us question what we would do in those same situations; to examine how and why our own values have been formed and how they relate to the society we live in now.
The Polish community that settled in the UK after the Second World War is unique. It is not a community formed of economic migrants but of political refugees. First hand accounts from Poles who fought in WW2 and those deported from Poland by the Soviet Union in 1940, in a massive act of ethnic cleansing, are in danger of being lost altogether as numbers decline. Details of these narratives are scarcely acknowledged by Western historians and for that reason I wish to give them a voice with this film.
As history continues to be rewritten and airbrushed to suit political agendas, I believe the story told in THE LAST WITNESS has never been more vital and contemporary as it deals directly with the nature of morality and whether a democratic government is ever justified in suppressing the truth in order to influence public opinion on world events.
In 2007, famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda made KATYN, finally examining the events surrounding the Katyn Massacre from a Polish point of view and now THE LAST WITNESS finally examines them from a British one.
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PIOTR SZKOPIAK
