UNLIKELY HEROES
unrated, 20 mins.

Richard Tranks has made a fascinating documentary in “Unlikely Heroes,” which focuses on seven people who helped save lives during the Holocaust. That many of these subjects are still alive and available for interviews makes for a more compelling viewing, as these events are not just recounted by talking heads, but by the actual individuals involved.

The film includes Leon Kahn, who witnessed the murder of his sister and father before he joined the partisans in Poland and sabotaged railroads to concentration camps; Willy Perl, who negotiated with SS officers in Berlin to help smuggle out Jews to then-Palestine – he eventually saved 40,000; and Anna Heilman, who, while forced to work at a munitions factory, smuggled out gunpowder later used in the destruction of a Birkenau crematorium in the Sonderkommando uprising. (Tim Blake Nelson’s underseen 2001 masterpiece “The Grey Zone” focuses on this event exclusively.)

As there is no other connection between these people, other than the theme, narrator Ben Kingsley – who speaks in a somber, whisper-tone that is probably less effective than was intended – ties the episodes together.

Mr. Tranks (producer of “The Long Way Home”) helps establish his subjects with interviews and the occasional incorporation of freshly shot footage that attempts to re-enact what his interviewees went through, but comes off as cheesy and superfluous. But he also uncovers archived footage and photographs that chronicled their ordeals. When he deals with this authentic material, the film becomes quite successful.