The shooting of a new film directed by Jan Holoubek (“25 Years of Innocence. The Case of Tomek Komenda”) begins, with a star-studded international cast. “Doppelgänger. Sobowtór” is another production of TVN Grupa Discovery. The film is announced to be released in 2023. The production has received funding from the Polish Film Institute.
Jan Holoubek is one of the most acclaimed directors of the younger generation, his debut feature film “25 Years of Innocence. The Case of Tomek Komenda” (“25 lat niewinności. Sprawa Tomka Komendy”) won plenty of awards and critical recognition. The director is again inspired by true stories. In “Doppelgänger. Sobowtór” the plot will center around identity theft.
For me, the most important layer of the film, hidden underneath the crime story, is the psychological one considering identity. “Doppelgänger. Sobowtór” is the story of losing it. I find the parallelism of the characters experiencing this almost simultaneously fascinating. This is a genre psychological thriller that takes us back to a fascinating time in the late 1970s and the beginning of the decade that followed. It plays out on both sides of the Iron Curtain at the same time. The main character settles in France, taking advantage of the comforts and freedoms that the prosperous West had to offer, and blends into the local community as part of an intelligence effort. In the background of the main plot, there is the “great story” of the turn of the decades – the events of August ’80, the dark years of martial law and finally the time of transformation. This is an extremely compelling period for me – Jan Holoubek, the director of the film.
“Doppelgänger. Sobowtór” is inspired by true stories of Polish special agents in the People’s Republic of Poland who used to steal other peoples’ identities and build false relationships along with their spy careers on them.
There were not many such intelligence agents of the People’s Republic of Poland. Only the best and most intelligent individuals with nerves of steel succeeded in the art of living with false personal details. “Duplicate” is the highest level of spy initiation. It is estimated that there were only fifteen such agents in the 1970s. Our character, played by Jakub Gierszał, was one of them. Preparations for the film took almost two years, and the start of shooting was preceded by long, meticulous documentation done by the director and the crew, as well as international castings – Anna Waśniewska, producer of the film, TVN Discovery Group.
This is already my second film, on a much larger scale, which is being made with a grant from the Polish Film Institute. I would like to thank the experts and the head, Radosław Śmigulski, for this support – adds the director of the film, Jan Holoubek.
Starring the excellent Jakub Gierszał and Emily Kusche known from the TV series “Sloborn”. The cast: Tomasz Schuchardt, Wiktoria Gorodeckaja, Andrzej Seweryn, Katarzyna Herman, Nathalie Richard, Joachim Raaf and Jessica McIntyre.
The film will be shot in Warsaw, Tricity, Bydgoszcz, Wrocław and Riga, Latvia.
The film is distributed by NEXT FILM.