Sobibor

Watching Sobibor (2018) means facing a narrative suspended between the triumph of historical resistance and the risks of an aesthetic that, at times, borders on excessive theatricality. Under the direction—and leading performance—of Konstantin Khabenskiy, the film retells the 1943 uprising at the Sobibor extermination camp, a collective act of bravery that only now, through Russian cinema, receives a dedicated spotlight. Yet the ambition to turn this story into a sweeping epic sometimes compromises the emotional truth of the event.

From the arrival train to the opening gas chamber scene, we are struck by a jarring contrast between false hope and raw horror. The cynical “welcome” offered to prisoners hits hard—especially for those familiar with how Nazi rhetoric operated long before it erupted into unspeakable violence. Here, slow motion and a heavy musical score illustrate death in carefully composed frames, but this stylization at times feels more artificial than visceral.

Khabenskiy’s direction succeeds in conveying torment and revolt, but it stumbles in overly individualizing the central characters. Most prisoners appear as archetypes—the women, the elderly, the Soviet comrades—without the layers that would allow us to connect to them more deeply. The protagonist, Soviet-Jewish officer Alexander Pechersky, delivers the emotional core of the film with strength, but the supporting characters lack the dramatic weight that would elevate the stakes of their collective suffering.

There is, however, a standout moment that encapsulates the film’s value: the nighttime escape, the carefully orchestrated revolt unfolding with mounting tension. In this third act, the pace quickens and finally delivers the urgency and symbolic liberation the story demands. This sequence becomes the film’s true climax, where aesthetic restraint finally serves narrative intensity instead of overwhelming it.

On the positive side, the film fulfills the role of rescuing a powerful yet underrepresented historical episode—an intentional state effort to reframe the Holocaust through a Soviet lens where national heroism is emphasized. By celebrating a Jewish-Soviet leader orchestrating a mass escape, Sobibor offers a significant counter-narrative to Western portrayals of Holocaust events.

Its weaknesses, however, are not insignificant. The film often resorts to over-dramatization, underlining suffering when it could simply let it speak for itself. Its grandeur sometimes overshadows the intimate horror. Furthermore, historical distortions—such as questionable depictions of leadership dynamics or character motivations—serve a symbolic narrative but undermine factual fidelity.

Overall, Sobibor is a bold work in terms of subject matter. Its strength lies in this very attempt to revive a forgotten act of defiance. But its execution reveals the core dilemma: how to expose atrocity without aestheticizing it; how to mourn and remember without polishing the trauma. Sobibor is not flawless, but it raises powerful questions about memory, morality, and the ethics of representing horror in contemporary cinema. Ultimately, what stays with us is not the cinematic heroism, but the call to remember—and the discomfort it rightly brings.

Sobibor (2018 / Russia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland)
Direction: Konstantin Khabenskiy
Screenplay: Konstantin Khabenskiy, Aleksandr Adabashyan, Andrei Nazarov, Anna Chernakova
Cast: Aleksandr Ilyin, Konstantin Khabensky, Christopher Lambert, Michalina Olszanska, Wolfgang Cerny, Maximilian Dirr, Mariya Kozhevnikova,Philippe Reinhardt
Running Time: 110 min.