User reviews

Went in blind and came out speechless. Had no idea it was a true story. So strong and compelling. The story is quite simple really. Schindler's List meets Parasite is the first thing that came to my mind when the movie ended.

The main character is so well cast, she tells the whole story with her eyes alone. Dougray Scott plays it very well, hadn't seen him since Mission Impossible 2! Overall I can't think of anyone that didn't convince me. I wouldn't cut any scene to make it shorter. Very gripping score as well.

6.3 does not do this film justice, believe me. I just hope this film will get more attention somehow.

Greetings again from the darkness. This is based on the true story of Irena Gut Opdyke who, during WWII, vowed "If I could save a life, I would." Directed by Louise Archambault, it has been adapted for the screen by Dan Gordon, who was the playwright for the hit Broadway play. Cinema has been utilized many times over the years to shine a light on so many who acted altruistically in protecting Jews from the Nazis. Some of these heroes saved one life, while others saved hundreds. The courage of these folks deserves to be remembered.

The film begins in 1939 as Germany invades Warsaw. A bomb drops on the hospital where Irena (Sophie Nelisse) is working. She is Polish, not Jewish, so she is sent to work in a munitions factory. Her features get her recognized by senior German officer Rugmer (Dougray Scott, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, 2011) who reassigns her to a supervisory role over Jews working in a hotel laundry. When Rugmer reassigns her again, this time to his personal villa as housekeeper, she learns the Jews in the laundry will be sent to a concentration camp.

We are fascinated by Irena's work to rescue and then hide these twelve people ... and she does so literally under the feet of Rugmer. Obviously, this puts herself and the hidden Jews in danger, but also Rugmer, who would surely be shot were they discovered in his home. Humor is scarce here. In fact, one of the most horrific scenes you'll ever view in a movie occurs. It's a devastating moment and one that won't soon be exorcised from my mind. In a rare display of levity, Irena befriends an elderly servant named Schultz (Andrzej Seweryn, SCHINDLER'S LIST, 1993) whose advice to her is to keep a low profile and 'know nothing'. Fans of the old "Hogan's Heroes" series will appreciate the connection.

The current issue of antisemitism gives this one a bit of contemporary feel, as does the abortion discussion amongst those hiding. At first, we can't help but wonder if this was for dramatic effect, although the answer becomes quite clear over the end credits. Sophie Nelisse was exceptional in THE BOOK THIEF, and she is terrific here as well, playing Irena Gut Opdyke who much later in life was honored with Righteous Among the Nations ... after being imprisoned for supporting Nazis. The epilogue spells out much of what happened, and all of it leaves us with the utmost respect for this quietly courageous woman.

A Fathom Events presentation on April 15 and April 16, 2024.

I've seen a lot of WW II movies. I've never seen one quite like this. "Irena's Vow" is the story of a real person, Irena Gut, a teenager when WW II began. She was a virgin, from a loving, well to do family. The war began, and she was gang raped, beaten, and left for dead by Red Army soldiers, famous for their rapes across Europe.

Nazis murdered her father. Her family split up She was alone and desperate. She never gave in to self pity, but dedicated herself to saving Jews from extermination. Her self sacrifice, her courage, and her ingenuity put the rest of us to shame. Holy Cow, what a woman.

Sophie Nelisse is almost supernatural in her ability to inhabit the young Irena Gut -- the real Irena's daughter said as much. Nelisse has said that she is not a Method actor, and she was able to shake off the difficulties of the part as soon as she heard "Cut." That's amazing.

I strongly recommend this film. Again, I can't thnk of anything else quite like it.

The street scenes for this were filmed in Lublin old town 4 kilometres from Majdanek concentration camp where my wife's grandmother (Adela) was held as a prisoner for 18 months.

Adela was a nurse in the Polish secret army and was caring for a Polish soldier who was injured when the Gestapo arrived one day in her hometown of Kurów and went to her house and shot the soldier and arrested her.

She was taken to Lublin Gestapo headquarters and tortured for two weeks including being raped multiple times and they broke all of her fingers and her jaw and many of her ribs and was then sent to Majdanek concentration camp.

She died three years ago and after the church service we saw a strange man talking to my father-in-law and after a few mins, we saw that they were both crying and hugging each other.

It turns out that he came from the same town of Kurów and in the war he was very sick and the only available medicine was from the Germans and his mother made the desperate decision to trade the information on Adela for medicine for her son.

Grandmother Adela never spoke about how she was deceived until her death as she knew that the son, his mother and all of her family would be called traitors and could face massive problems in their lives.

She only mentioned the camp a few times in her life as it was too traumatic to speak about, but the times she did speak about it was about the disgusting things the Germans did to the Jews rather reminiscent of the street scene in this film where one German woman guard smashed a baby's head on the floor because it was crying too loud.

I try to understand the hatred between nations of modern times but Grandmother Adela taught us that the hatred should be directed towards the leaders of such terrible conflicts, not the people.

I was proud to name my daughter after her.

"Irena's Vow" tells the story of a courageous Polish girl, Irena Gut Opdyke, who gets caught in a street roundup to be used as a laborer for the Nazis, who have taken over Poland. Irena, through her cunning and beauty, ends up as a housekeeper for an SS officer at a new villa, which was previously owned by a Jewish family. Through her humanity and cunning ways, Irena is able to rescue and house 11 Jewish workers from her previous place of work and transport them to the new Villa, where she hides them in the cellar and then another secret room, all under the roof of the SS Officer. To reveal any more would be considered a spoiler. I found this production very well acted and directed and location shots in Poland were very effective. The film lacked the emotional punch of a "Schindler's List" or "One Life", but the film is worth seeing and learning about another heroic person who endangered their own life to help Jewish victims from the death camps. For this, Irena was given the title of Righteous One in Israel, for saving Jewish lives.

Irena is a Polish woman caught in the early stages of Nazi occupation, enlisted to work for the new regime, who after witness to the horrors unleashed against the local Jews, decides to do everything in her power to save the victims. That is her vow. And this is her astounding true story.

Presented more as a theatre piece than movie, "Irena's Vow" seldom moves outdoors, save for a few market square scenes, focusing mainly on interiors, where Irena keeps mansion for a high ranking officer, and keeps a group of Jews hidden in the cellar.

The grit, grime and scuffy realities of war are absent here, as everything focuses on the characters and the carefully orchestrated set pieces. The clean and simple play presentation makes for a distancing film experience, which slowly dissolves as the story picks up the pace. And the story is the star here.

Scrambling to avoid detection under the enemy's roof, Irena shows cool resolve, clever problem solves, and total dedication to her cause. The surface sheen of the movie which never digs far enough to get a good grip on the characters, is finally broken with the post film credits, that feature photos and historic summaries of the aftermath. Then it finally hits home.

• hipCRANK.

I have always been a huge supporter and sympathizer of oppressed people all over the world. I will never understand any person's intense hatred and extreme obsession to hurt another based solely on one's race. Thankfully, on the flip side of this evil, we are also inspired by decent people who have displayed heroic acts of courage, morals and good conscience to protect victims in these horrific circumstances. I was immediately drawn into this movie and captivated until the credits rolled by. Sophie Nelisse and the entire cast deliver phenomenal performances. This movie is fraught with drama and suspense and I can't recommend it highly enough!

I fully confess to doing a poor job of keeping up with current film releases over the past several years, as my knowledge has mostly been ad hoc, based on what's showing up on my streaming services. I'd heard nothing of this film until seeing it on the carte on Showtime a couple of nights ago, knew almost the same about any of the parties involved. I also rarely write notes on IMDB but am drawn in this instance in light of the undeservedly mediocre overall score, skewed by one review which seems ridiculous in all regards to me. So, onto the film itself. As others have noted, the acting and production values can be uneven, but what a story! There's more than a bit of Schindler's List here, but this is even more extraordinary, with the protagonist having anything but a privileged position. Other have recapped the plot well; I won't do that here, but as impressive this is as a yarn, what's more so is the moral complexity and humanity of almost all of the characters, even the Germans, and the gimlet eyed vision of the filmmaker that, although they're not the primary bad guys here, the Soviets have almost as much to answer for as the Nazis for their actions during this time, very much putting the lie to the "Good Fight" misnomer (as so many other things, entirely unrelated to this film, like Japanese-American internment, our bombing of civilian populations in Germany and Japan, indifference to the plight of European Jews, etc., etc, do too). I'm often moved by great cinema, but I must admit getting a bit more than teary watching the follow up stories of the real life characters which roll during the final credits (don't miss this!). This nets out for me somewhere between an 8 and a 9, but it gets the benefit of the doubt for the greatness of the story and the need to bump up the collective score here. I note that, while this movie isn't Polish, it's set there, making for a duo of two of the best films of the past years I've seen along with "Forgotten Love". Highly recommended.

Following the success of The Book Thief and Yellowjackets, Sophie Nélisse stars in this powerful and sensitive story based on real events. She plays a young Polish woman, Irena Gut Opdyke (Sophie Nélisse), who during the Second World War, hid a group of Jews in the house of her boss: a high-ranking Nazi commander (Dougray Scott) . Through the eyes of a strong-willed woman comes the remarkable story of Irena Gut, and the triumphs of the human spirit over devastating tragedy, as she risked her life to save a generation of Jews from the atrocities of the Holocaust. Who would look for a group of Jews in a Nazi's house?

Irena's Vow(2023) is a biographic film about Irene Gut Opdyke (1918 - 2003) who was a Polish nurse who gained international recognition for aiding Polish Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. She was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking her life to save twelve Jews.she enrolled at the nursing school before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of 1939. While hiding during the invasion, Russian soldiers discovered her and she was beaten and raped. Originally forced to work in a munitions factory during the German occupation, Gut was hired by Wehrmacht Major Eduard Rügemer to work in a kitchen of a hotel that frequently served Nazi officials when he learned she was fluent in German. The film, which premiered at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, delves into Irene's anguish and fear, her relationship with the commander, as well as the young woman's own will to carry out this heroic act and save the unfortunate people who were relentlessly persecuted. A story of survival and resilience that also spoke of friendship and how, despite the harshness and isolation of life , a good girl helps unfortunate and pursued people at whatever cost. Stories of war survival, particularly the Holocaust, are almost always harrowing and moving, as they require significant effort to faithfully convey the sufferings of Jews who are continually harassed, either in concentration camps or in the dangerous escapes they often made. Those who managed to survive did not remain unscathed, suffering many psychological traumas, often suffering many family losses or personal torture. However, some managed to live to tell their story, which they share with the world to recognize those who disappeared, as well as those who helped them stay alive. Allies and sympathizers also took great risks, resulting in a variety of reasons why they might have refused to be willing to help a Jew hiding from the Nazis.

There is decent photography by cameraman Paul Sarossy, and taking place in war-torn Eastern Europe, the film was shot on location in Konstancin-Jeziorna, Mazowieckie, Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Lublin, Lubelskie, and Modlin, Mazowieckie, Poland. There are no major special effects or war scenes, as it is a story that takes place far from the front, although the Jews do eventually find themselves hunted by greedy Polish bounty hunters who have been promised lavish rewards by the Nazis. But ultimately this is still a story of survival that runs from the beginning of the film to the end. It is also an English-language film, a Canadian/Polish coproduction in origin, despite taking place in occupied Poland, which should make it more accessible to a wider audience.

The motion picture was well directed by Louise Archambault. It will be released in April 2024 and it premiered at TIFF and won an Audience Award at VIFF and WIFF. In 2019, Louise released the feature films, Il pleuvait des oiseaux (And the Birds Rained Down), which won awards such as Best Feature at the Göteborg Film Festival and the comedy Merci pour tout (Thanks for everything). These films ranked 2nd and 3rd position in Canada's box office. Her recent feature Le temps d'un été (One Summer) was released in July 2023 and ranked top 1 Canadian film at the box office, the best Canadian BO since 2019. Rating: 6.5/10.

When I stumbled upon the 2023 war drama "Irena's Vow" by random chance here in 2024, of course I opted to sit down and watch it, as I enjoy World War II themed movies. Sure, I had never even heard about this movie, but the synopsis sounded interesting enough, and with it being based on actual events, well, then it just seemed like the movie had potential.

Right, well writer Dan Gordon and director Louise Archambault certainly set out with a grand ambition, for sure. However, the end result that is "Irena's Vow" just was too sluggish and mundane. I was actually seriously bored throughout the 121 minutes that the movie ran for, and found it to be quite a struggle to sit through the ordeal, especially since the narrative was so bland and uneventful.

I found "Irena's Vow" to be a disappointing movie, especially since the movie's synopsis sounded interesting enough. The script just utterly failed to entertain me. There wasn't enough action going on in the movie, nor were there enough of anything overly interesting going on in the narrative.

The only face on the screen that I was familiar with was actor Dougray Scott. It should be noted, however, that the acting performances in the movie were actually fair, despite the fact that the script and narrative was a swing and a miss.

This is not a movie that will find its way back on my screen a second time, simply because the movie failed to entertain me, because it was a bland movie set with a World War II backdrop, and because it was hands down a boring movie.

But I am sure that diehard fans of heavy dramas with a World War II backdrop will enjoy this movie. That, however, is not particular go-to kind of genre for entertainment.

My rating of director Louise Archambault's 2023 war drama "Irena's Vow" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.

Many unsung heroes have come and gone without anyone really hearing their story. I love watching movies about them, it makes you realize how good people are and makes you want to do same. Irena was a Pol who lived during the Nazis invasion of Poland and found herself working for one of the Nazi Generals.

She found favor in his eyes and used that weakness to save some Jews. It was edgy, brave and tense watching how everything transpired. One thing I like about true story movies is that, because it's based off real events, you can't quite guess what will happen at any point. And that is so refreshing.

Great movie. And my goodness, Sophie is beautiful.

Irena's Vow

Other than beating the tar out of Nazis, the other kind of WWII movies I enjoy are the ones that feature the unsung heroes that were able to rescue small groups of Jewish people. Irena's Vow features Irena Gut, a Polish woman forced into service by the occupying Germans in the city of Tarnopol (now in the Ukraine as Ternopol).

While working for Major Rügemer, she is assigned to supervise the laundry, and then as the housekeeper for his villa, seized from a Polish family. When she saw that all the people in the laundry were to be executed as part of Hitler's plan, she schemes to hide them in the very house that the Major now occupies.

If this wasn't a true story, I wouldn't have believed a word of this. It was so poorly acted, I felt like I was watching a modern film with costumes, instead of a film to transport us back in time to the mad era of Nazi insanity.

It becomes quite clear, sort of, early on that Rügemer has a thing for Irena, but it catapults forward when he discovers that there are Jews hiding in his home. The speed and transformation of superior to inferior to Polish lover was so fast, it just didn't make sense in the narrative.

Sophie Nélisse, as Irena, did a great job of emoting the compassion, the panic, the fear, the horror and the bravery all needed to survive. After witnessing a child get murdered on the street by yet another disgraceful "German", she really dove into her risky plan to save as many Jews as she could.

I wanted to love this due to the bravery in the depths of despair, but it wasn't completely well done. I don't know, nor can I put my finger on it, but I felt it could have been done better. I'm just glad it really happened and the people went on to live full lives. The notes in the credits were really sweet.

It's a Canadian-Polish World War II drama set in Radom, Poland, from 1939 to 1944. It follows a pious young Polish woman, Irena Gut (Sophie Nélisse), who is training as a nurse in 1939 when Germany invades Poland. She works in a factory for a time but catches the eye of Major Rugemer (Dougray Scott), the senior Wehrmacht officer in the area, because she has German physical features and speaks good German. First, she works in a hotel serving German officers and supervises some Polish workers, including some Jews. She then becomes Major Rugemer's housekeeper in a large villa where he lives and entertains.

Irena uses her position to hide twelve Jews with whom she had worked in the factory in a hidden part of the villa's basement. The film follows her process of hiding the Jews, the threats posed by SS Officer Rokita (Maciej Nawrocki), and the consequences when Major Rugemer finally discovers she is hiding Jews in his villa.

"Irena's Vow" tells an engaging story of a creative young woman negotiating complicated moral terrain. The script smooths out some realities and likely exploits and exaggerates some incidents. Nélisse and Scott are both very convincing in their characters, but the story does seem to drag a bit from time to time and some dialogue seemed canned. Perhaps it could have been 15-20 minutes shorter.