First Look at Film About Holocaust Rescuer Nicholas Winton Starring Anthony Hopkins

See-Saw Films released on Monday the first images from its new film One Life, which tells the true story of Sir Nicholas Winton, played in the film by Anthony Hopkins, and how he helped save roughly 669 children from the Nazis during World War II.

One Life will make its world premiere as a special presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival scheduled to take place from Sept. 7-17, the production company announced. Directed by James Hawes and written by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake, the film is based on the book, If it’s not impossible… The life of Sir Nicholas Winton by Barbara Winton. Hopkins, a two-time Oscar winner, and Johnny Flynn both play Nicholas Winton at different ages while Helena Bonham-Carter plays his German-Jewish mother, Babi. The cast includes Jonathan Pryce, Lena Olin, Romola Garai and Alex Sharp.

Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton was a young London stockbroker who organized a rescue mission that brought approximately 669 children, mostly Jewish, safely from Czechoslovakia to Britain before the outbreak of World War II. The first transport of children that he organized left Prague by plane for London on March 14, 1939, the day before the Germans occupied Czech territory. He raised money to fund the transports and also found British foster families willing to care for the refugee children. He was often referred to as the British Schindler after German Holocaust rescuer Oscar Schindler.

Winton did not publicize his rescue efforts even after the war and they remained virtually unknown until 1988, when his wife Grete found a scrapbook from 1939 that included photos and a list of names of all the children he rescued. Shortly after BBC’s live television show called That’s Life invited Winton to attend the show as an audience member and surprised him by having the children he saved – now adults – seated all around him.

Winton received a letter of thanks from the former President of Israel Ezer Weizman for his heroism and was made an honorary citizen of Prague in the independent Czech Republic. In 2002, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to humanity. Winton died in 2015 at the age of 106 on the anniversary of the departure of a train that carried his largest group of rescued children —241 – from Czechoslovakia.

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