The British Schindler

Poster for One Life. Credit: Bleecker Street and Warner Bros. Pictures.

*Docudrama. 1h 49 min. 2024. *

Nicholas Winton is an English stockbroker who has a comfortable life in 1930 London but knows that Hitler’s Germany is invading Praga, Czechoslovakia; with a humanitarian group, he helps save 669 children from Nazism. Winton worked quickly to find foster families for hundreds of children—a beautiful and sad biographical story. Winton was a kind of Schindler but an English one. Nicholas saved these children, but always wondered what was going on with them. He kept this story a secret. Only the people who helped save these children knew until his wife found a scrapbook with photos of the children decades later (in 1988) and, talking to her husband, discovered the whole story. Grete, his wife, shared this story with a historian, which led to a British TV show. This widely-watched program interviewed him and allowed him to meet these “children” again, who were already adults at the time, in a very moving encounter that was the film’s climax.

The actor who plays Nicholas Winton is none other than renowned Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs,* The Father*), who, as always, performs masterfully; Johnny Flynn (Les Misérables, Ripley) plays a young Winton. His mother, Babi Winton, played by Helena Bonham Carter (the Harry Potter series, The Crown, The King’s Speech), helped him raise some money and find foster families for the children. The message of this movie is about serving humanity.

After the film, I researched Nicholas and watched some interviews with him. What he wonders most and can’t accept is how people, after the terror of war, have learned nothing from history. They treat him as a hero, but that’s all. Anyone can do what he did (help people who need help), not only in war zones but also people who are going through any kind of hardship. The film brought me to tears for apparent reasons of inhumanity and cruelty, but it also made me want to change. Nicholas inspires us to be the change in the world. In today’s world, where humanitarian crises continue to unfold, the message of this film is more relevant than ever. I highly recommend watching this movie, which, besides having a strong story and a courageous man, is very well executed. It has an incredible script written by screenwriters Nick Drake and Lucinda Coxon based on the book If It’s Not Impossible…: The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton, written by Barbara Winton (Nicholas’ daughter) and is directed by James Hawes (Slow Horses, Raised by Wolves, Black Mirror).

I also recommend watching his interview with the 60 Minutes channel on YouTube, “Saving the Children from the Holocaust.” Helping is a fantastic way to be alive. Thank you, Nicholas, for being such an incredible soul.