I’m happy to be on a team of “Grain of truth”, the second film of Borys Lankosz, director of “Reverse” Polish candidate to OSCAR ACADEMY AWARD® in 2009, awarded at the film festival in Moscow, New York and Seattle. The film is an adaptation of the bestseller thriller by Zygmunt Miloszewski , “A Grain of Truth” was awarded the High Calibre Prize for the Best Polish Crime Novel of the Year 2011. It was published in 2012 in Great Britain and USA by Bitter Lemon Press. On January 2014 the book was published in Israel by Pen / Jedijot Sfarim
So, what is it all about?
A big shot prosecutor Teodor Szacki divorces his wife and leaves Warsaw to “start a new life” in picturesque town in southeast Poland Sandomierz. After a short while he is called in to investigate a strange and mysterious murder case. Alienated in provincial reality he struggles to find a killer, when he stumbles upon more victims. While the investigation continues he realizes that all murders are connected to alleged historical Jewish ritual killings. Those murders prompt a wave of antisemitic hysteria in the town. In his investigation Szacki must wrestle with the painful tangle of PolishJewish relations and real findings of his work that roots of some legends arefantasy, not a grain of truth… (source: Studio Rewers).
My work included: making the clay model of the underground and then the storyboard for an underground sequence.
“Grain of truth” was promoted during Berlin International Film Festival. Below, a promotional leaflet, with my illustration on the front and back – it is a travesty of an infamous painting by Karol de Prevot, depicting Jews slaughtering Christian children. Since XVII century the painting decorates the wall of a catholic cathedral in Sandomierz – sadly for years it was left without any commentary or just covered – a shameful sign of anti-Semitism, hidden deeply in our consciousness, functioning (even till now) in a form of a gruesome urban legend.
UPDATE: I’m proud to say that this illustration became a part of collection of Museum of History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw. Read more.
De Prevot’s painting. Source: Wiki Media,
Art by Joanna Karpowicz 