Trailer
Plot summary
In 1939, the Polish military Janusz is accused of espionage by the Soviet Union. His wife is tortured and Janusz is sentenced to twenty years imprisoned in a Siberian gulag. When Janusz is assigned to work in the mines, he feels that the only chance to survive is escaping from the camp. He plots to break out with the bitter American Mr. Smith; the funny Yugoslavian accountant Zoran; the Polish chef and aspirant artist Tomasz Horodynsky; the Polish Kazik that has night blindness; and the Latvian priest Voss and is forced to admit the Russian criminal Valka in the group of escapees. Along their journey, they face snow storm, mosquitoes, hunger, the desert, sand storm, thirsty and they meet the fugitive teenager Irena that joins the group.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Way Back (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was inspired by Sławomir Rawicz's 1956 memoir The Long Walk, which sold over 500,000 copies and is credited with inspiring many explorers, but 2006 BBC records showed Rawicz had been released by the USSR in 1942 instead of escaping a Gulag.
- British intelligence officer Captain Rupert Mayne interviewed three emaciated men in Calcutta in 1942 who claimed to have escaped Siberia, and always believed their story was the same as The Long Walk's, so someone other than Rawicz may have made the trek.
- Director Peter Weir continues to claim the long walk happened, yet describes his own film The Way Back as "essentially a fictional film".
