One Life (12A)

One Life - starring Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter - tells the true story of Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton, a young London broker, who, along with Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warinner of the British Committee for Refugees in Czechoslovakia, rescued 669 children from the Nazis in the months leading up to World War II.

Nicky visited Prague in December 1938 and found families who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria living in desperate conditions with little or no shelter and food, and under threat of Nazi invasion.

He immediately realised it was a race against time. How many children could he and the team rescue before the borders closed? 

Fifty years later, it’s 1988 and Nicky lives haunted by the fate of the children he wasn’t able to bring to safety in England; always blaming himself for not doing more.

It’s not until a live BBC television show, ‘That’s Life!’, surprises him by introducing him to some surviving children – now adults – that he finally begins to come to terms with the guilt and grief he had carried for five decades. 

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★★★★ Anthony Hopkins is in sterling form in this moving biographical drama. ~ Radio Times.

★★★★ Hopkins stars as Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 Jewish children from the Nazis – alongside Helena Bonham Carter who is on mighty form - in this extraordinary true story of ‘British Schindler’. ~ The Guardian.

★★★★ Hopkins's light-touch and affecting restraint are perfect for this extraordinary true story of Hampstead-born stockbroker Nicholas Winton. ~ The Telegraph.

★★★★ With this tear-jerking story of Britain’s own Schindler Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn do justice to Nicholas Winton, a remarkable and almost comically modest man. ~ The Times.

★★★★ The central facts of Winton’s story are so moving, and where this telling ends is so powerful that any misgivings about the film’s style vanish. ~ Financial Times.

★★★★★ By God this is a superb performance from Sir Anthony Hopkins. If you don’t cry at this beautiful tribute you need medical help. ~ London Evening Standard.