In the recently released Triumph of the Heart, writer-director Anthony D’Ambrosio presents a dramatized account of the final days of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of another man in Auschwitz.
The film offers a somber, reflective portrayal of courage, conviction, and spiritual endurance under extreme suffering.
It opens with then-Father Kolbe, played by actor Marcin Kwaśny, stepping forward to take the place of another prisoner condemned to die by starvation. Over the next 13 days, the story unfolds almost entirely within the starvation cell, focusing on the slow death of the men and the transformation that occurs through the saint’s spiritual leadership.
A setting meant to destroy transformed by grace
Fr. Kolbe’s sacrifice takes place against the backdrop of Nazi efforts to destroy Poland’s morale and Catholic identity. Once an influential publisher and religious leader, Fr. Kolbe is seen as a threat by Nazi authorities. His act of charity is not only personal — it is perceived as a dangerous public symbol.
Throughout the film, German officers attempt to diminish the significance of his choice. One general even tells him directly: “All that your love has accomplished is your own death and the death of your brethren.”
But the future saint remains faithful, quietly bearing witness through his prayer and presence.
The prisoners are initially broken and divided. A single sharp rock is left in the chamber as a way out — an invitation to despair. Some consider it, but Fr. Kolbe stops them, telling the men, “If dignity is what you want, you won’t find it by taking your own life.”
Some of the men mock his attempts to sing or pray. When he proposes forming a “prayer militia,” the idea is met with ridicule. But gradually, he draws them together — encouraging them to pray, to sing, and to confess. By the end, the men look to him for strength.
Just outside the starvation chamber, women are forced into heavy labor. As Nazi soldiers sing drunkenly nearby, one of the women begins a Polish patriotic song in defiance. She is shot. Fr. Kolbe leads the men inside the chamber to pick up the melody, and others across the camp join in. Several are also shot as the Nazi soldiers attempt to silence the singing.
It becomes one of the film’s most powerful images of resistance — a shared act of courage and identity in a setting designed to erase both.
The saint suffered too — but stayed steady
In one scene, a fellow prisoner confesses that he was the one who gave the Nazis Fr. Kolbe’s name, leading to his arrest. The saintly priest is clearly affected by the revelation, but he forgives the man without hesitation.
The moment reveals something quietly important: He is not removed from the fear and pain around him, and his strength doesn’t come from being above it but from choosing to remain steady within it.
“I wonder where you have been these past two years to believe in Heaven or God,” another prisoner says to him. “Certainly you couldn't have been living in this world — the world of starvation, children dying in a cage. The strong win, the weak die. Here, to live, you have to steal a bowl of soup from someone else.”
Fr. Kolbe doesn’t deny the weight of the darkness. He acknowledges his own anger at what has happened to Poland and makes clear that he, too, feels the suffering around them.
But his hope isn’t rooted in ignoring the reality around them — it’s rooted in Christ.
“‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’” he quotes, telling his fellow prisoner, “I’m just grateful that I have a Savior who came to be with me in my suffering.”
In a quiet but powerful gesture, St. Maximilian grinds the rock they were given for suicide and, mixing it with spit, uses the ash to mark the prisoners with the sign of the cross before their deaths.
St. Maximilian is shown weeping with the others and comforting each of them in their final hours. After each man dies, the film cuts to a close-up of his face, now illuminated by the same soft, golden light that streams through the starvation chamber’s single window.
That window, their only link to the outside world, lets in light from a freedom they can see but never reach. In death, each man’s face is shown in that same glow — some with expressions of relief and others with sentiments of sorrow, consternation, or quiet peace. The repeated framing becomes a visual motif that suggests that the freedom denied to them in life is finally received in death.
Marian devotion at the center
St. Maximilian’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is a consistent theme throughout the film. In a flashback to his childhood, his mother comforts him after a nightmare and teaches him a Marian hymn — one he later recalls and teaches to the men in the starvation chamber. While they are initially hesitant or mocking, the men eventually join him in singing it.
The film includes multiple Marian visions that reflect the depth of St. Maximilian’s devotion. In one, he sees Mary, bearing scars on her face, offering him a crown of thorns while he stands in his prison uniform — a powerful image that seems to represent his calling to suffer and die with the starving men.
Later, when the other prisoners ask how he is able to hold on to hope in such circumstances, he tells them about a dream he once had in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to him wearing a beautiful white veil and brought him to a wedding feast, where he saw Christ.
That vision is fulfilled in the film’s final moments, when after his death Our Lady is seen leading him out of the starvation chamber into a joyful Polish celebration, where he is reunited with the men who died with him.
The film closes with a letter one of the prisoners wrote to his fiancée, saying: “I want you to know, somehow, in this ugly end, we have triumphed.”
St. Maximilian’s heroic virtue, as the film portrays it, isn’t defined by spectacle but by a steady endurance — the kind that holds steady in suffering, leads others, and doesn’t flinch from the cost. There’s no dramatic showdown, no moment of rescue — just a man who keeps showing up for others while everything is being stripped away. In that quiet constancy, the film finds its definition of triumph.
Triumph of the Heart will premiere in select US theaters for a one-night event Sept. 12. Communities without a scheduled showing can bring the film to their city by launching a crowdfunding campaign through the official website.