''The Champion'' ( pl, Mistrz, link=yes, "''The Master''"), released in some English-speaking countries as ''The Champion of Auschwitz'', is a 2020 Polish

sports drama A sports film is a film genre in which any particular sport plays a prominent role in the film's plot or acts as its central theme. It is a production in which a sport, sporting event, athlete (and their sport), or follower of sport (and the spor ...

film written and directed by Maciej Barczewski. It stars

Piotr Głowacki Piotr Głowacki (born 29 March 1980) is a Polish actor. He appeared in more than sixty films since 2004. Awarded with the most prestigious prize for a young actor of his generation in 2014, Głowacki has since played in major Polish and internatio ...

Tadeusz Pietrzykowski Tadeusz Pietrzykowski (Polish pronunciation: ; born 8 April 1917, Warsaw died 17 April 1991, Bielsko-Biała) was a Polish boxer, Polish Armed Forces soldier, and a prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Neuengamme concentration camps run by the ...

, a real-life Polish boxer who became famous for his nearly undefeated strings of victories in the

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

. The film also stars Rafal Zawierucha,

Marcin Czarnik Marcin Czarnik (born 23 March 1976, Oświęcim, Poland) is a Polish film and theatre actor, most notable for appearing as Feigenbaum in the Academy Award-winning film ''Son of Saul''. Graduating from the Theatre Academy in Warsaw in 2000, he pe ...

and

Marian Dziedziel Marian may refer to: People * Mari people, a Finno-Ugric ethnic group in Russia * Marian (given name), a list of people with the given name * Marian (surname), a list of people so named Places * Marian, Iran (disambiguation) * Marian, Queensla ...

. The music was composed by Bartosz Chajdecki. This is the first full-length movie directed by Barczewski. The film premiered at the Gdynia Polish Film Festival on 8 December 2020. ''The Champion'' is notable for being the first film for which a foreign-language version (in English) was created in which the actors' facial movements are modified so that they appear to be speaking that language. The work was done using a technology similar to

deepfake Deepfakes (a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake") are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness. While the act of creating fake content is not new, deepfakes leverage powerful ...

, proprietary to the

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

-based tech startup Adapt Entertainment, which bought the English-language distribution rights for ''The Champion'' so that it could serve as a

proof of concept Proof of concept (POC or PoC), also known as proof of principle, is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has prac ...

for its technology.

Plot

The movie tells the story of

, a real-life Polish boxer who became famous for his nearly undefeated strings of victories in the

Development

The film was announced in 2019. The shooting finished in January 2020. The movie was initially scheduled for release for 16 October 2020 but has been delayed with the new release date given as March 2021. The delay was likely caused by the

impact of the COVID-19 pandemic As of 2022, the COVID‑19 pandemic is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV‑2). Its impact has been broad, affecting general society, the ...

on the Polish cinemas.

Cast

* Piotr Glowacki as

* Rafal Zawierucha as Klimko *

as Bruno *

* Martin Hugh Henley as Officer from Neuengamme *

Marcin Bosak Marcin Bosak (born 9 September 1979 in Łódź) is a Polish actor. He appeared in more than twenty-five films since 1995. Biography He was born and raised in Łódź. He has a younger sister, Anna, finalist of the You Can Dance: Po prostu tań ...

as Lagerführer * Piotr Witkowski as Walter * Grzegorz Malecki as Rapportführer * Lukasz Szoblik as Bumbo

English-language version

The Tel Aviv-based startup Adapt Entertainment is based around proprietary machine learning process, named Plato, that uses AI to modify actors' faces within film and television shows in order to make it appear that those actors are speaking another language, as a substitute for

dubbing Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production sou ...

. The software is similar to but distinct from

technology. The company bought the English-language distribution rights to ''The Champion'' at the 2021

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

for $100,000, after the film had seen financial success in Poland, as a proof of concept for its process. They then hired much of the film's original cast to be filmed at a studio speaking the film's dialogue in English, and used the resulting audio, as well as a combination of the old and new footage as training material, to infer the characters' facial movements to match the new dialogue. Director Barczewski was supportive of the new version, saying he had wanted to additionally film ''The Champion'' in English but could not afford to do it.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Champion, The 2020s Polish-language films Polish boxing films Polish World War II films Films shot in Poland Films set in Poland Films set in Germany Films set in concentration camps 2020 films 2020 drama films 2020s sports drama films Polish sports drama films