Here’s to using your celebrity to tell meaningful stories. Back in August, it was announced that Gal Gadot had joined a Showtime limited series about Hedy Lamarr, the famous actress and inventor whose work with radio-controlled torpedos was decades ahead of its time. Yesterday, Deadline announced Gadot has partnered with husband Jaron Varsano to produce and star in “Irena Sendler,” a film about the wartime heroics of the late Polish social worker. Some people turn their superhero clout into vanity projects; Gadot is using hers to bring stories of real-world heroines to the broadest possible stage.
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For those unfamiliar with Sendler’s work during World War II, the activist was instrumental in helping Jewish children escape the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. As noted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sendler helped smuggle out more than 2,5000 children during the war. At one point, she was caught and sentenced to death by the Gestapo, but her allies were able to smuggle her out of prison. Shortly after that, she resumed her work and was eventually awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medallion by Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. Sendler lived to the age of 98 and died in 2008 after a long illness.
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As noted in the Deadline article, ‘Sendler’ will be written by Justine Juel Gillmer, who has previously written for television shows like “The 100” and “Into the Badlands.” Gillmer will make her feature film writing debut with next year’s “Harry Haft,” another World War II-era biopic about the famous Polish boxer who was forced to undergo fights to the death while in the concentration camps. While Gadot will be the headliner of ‘Sendler,’ the interconnected nature of the Holocaust projects being written by Gillmer—one redemptive, one haunting—is particularly noteworthy.
