RKS 2025 Film: “Bau: Artist at War”

“Bau: Artist at War” is based on Joseph’s Bau’s autobiographical novel, “Dear God Have You Ever Gone Hungry”.

Bau (Emile Hirsch) was deported from the Krakow Ghetto by the German occupiers of Poland and transported from the Krakow Ghetto with his family to the Plaszow Concentration Camp.

Franz Gruen (Yan Tual) is a vicious concentration camp guard with a seething hatred for Jews and has his eye on Bau suffering a kiss of mockery from Bau in the Krakow Ghetto before his deportation to Plaszow. Gruen wreaks revenge on Bau and if it wasn’t for Kommendant Goeth’s need for the artistic skills of Bau for maps and anti-Semitic posters Gruen would have murdered Bau.

Gruen is vicious but so is Goeth (Josh Blacker) although Goeth despises Gruen for his weakness.

Bau discovers Rebecca (Inbar Levi), a woman he admired in the Krakow Ghetto, is also at Plaszow and a romance develops leading to a covert marriage at the camp which was featured in the film “Schindler’s List”.

Rebecca is a manicurist for Goeth but also a resistance spy with access to documents left by Goeth on his desk which she reads and communicates to fellow resistance members for planning purposes.

Bau forges identity documents for Jews outside the camps saving over 1,000 lives by war’s end. A talented sketch artist he amuses prisoners with his satirical etchings of camp guards including toilet paper, each square having Hitler’s image on it. Bau’s sense of humour and courage is an inspiration to fellow prisoners.

Schindler is featured in the film as the saviour of many Jews by having then work in his factories and providing assistance and forged documents to Jews helping them escape death.

As the Allied forces move closer to Berlin the Nazis attempt to remove all evidence of concentration camps by liquidating imprisoned Jews and moving others to camps closer to Germany. Rebecca is located to Auschwitz and Bau to a Schindler armaments factory.

Upon the surrender of Germany on 9May1945 all Jews at Schindler’s armaments factory are to be executed however Schindler ensures the telegram containing those orders is not received by the military garrison at his factory hence saving all the Jewish forced labourers.

By an exhaustive search throughout Europe Bau locates Rebecca.

Bau agrees to provide testimony at the crimes against humanity trial of Gruen in Vienna and through fabricated testimony incites an angry self incriminating outburst by Gruen amounting to an admission of murder for which Gruen is convicted of crimes against humanity spending the rest of his days in prison where he died in captivity.

Riveting courtroom drama. What a surprise to discover who the lawyer for the prosecution is.

The dialogue of the film being English with mimicked Euro accents chips away at its authenticity particularly the American lilt of Hirsch as Bau.

Bad guys Josh Blacker as Goeth and Yan Tual as Gruen deliver performances of pure evil.

Directed by Sean McNamara.

Canadian theatrical release is 26September2025.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 73/100.