Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimoswski hasn’t made a feature film since 2020’s “EO,” but is reportedly set to make a Holocaust drama, “Angel of Death,” that will explore the ghoulish relationship between Jewish pathologist Dr. Miklos Nyiszli and Nazi Officer/physician Dr. Josef Mengele as they worked together on horrorifc experiments on Jewish prisoners during WWII.
Quite grim subject matter, but oddly it is coming from an unexpected place as Shia LaBeouf is behind the drama’s script with World of Reel reporting on Skolimoswki’s boarding on “Angel of Death” alongside that LaBeouf is going to star in it (mentioned as the film’s co-writer). Although the site fails to mention which of the two doctors at the centre of the Holocaust story he’ll be playing in their write-up, it just briefly states that he’ll have a “lead role.”
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While we can’t independently confirm the involvement of Skolimowski, the script penned by LaBeouf is as real as it gets (it has been kicking around for at least three years) and has an entry listing on the screenwriting site Coverfly (said to be shutting down), under the working title “A8450, M.D.” along with a brief logline:
When a Jewish pathologist, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, is sent to work for ‘Angel of Death’ Dr. Josef Mengele in Auschwitz, he struggles to maintain his humanity as he is forced to endure the horrors of the Holocaust.
The site listing also mentioned that LaBeouf’s script had been “optioned,”
One of the most despicable Nazi “doctors” during the heinous genocidal events of WWII spearheaded by the Nazi Party, Mengele was nicknamed The Angel of Death, after carrying out gas chamber massacres at Auschwitz and his brutal experiments on prisoners with the aid of folks like Nyiszli, a prisoner of the camp himself. Like many Nazis after the war, Mengele fled to South America through a network of former SS operatives eluding a global manhunt for his capture and extradition, he eventually drowned while swimming in Brazil in 1979 after suffering a stroke.
It’s unclear how much of Mengele’s life is going to be covered in “Angel of Death,” as we presume, given that the script’s original title was that of Nyiszli‘s prison camp number tattoo, it’ll be coming from his perspective of those events and not Mengele. “Angel of Death” certainly sounds like it could be as dark as something like “Son of Saul” and should be just as stomach-turning.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
