Alan J. Pakula · 1982 · exile

Alan J. Pakula's 1982 film, from William Styron's novel. In postwar Brooklyn, a young Southern writer named Stingo befriends the Polish survivor Sophie and her volatile lover Nathan, and slowly learns the unbearable secret of her past. Through flashbacks to occupied Warsaw and the horror of Auschwitz - and the impossible choice forced on her there - the weight of history crushes the fragile present.

1. 1
   Warsaw

   The occupied Polish city where Sophie, a Catholic, is caught up in the machinery of the Nazi terror and, with her children, is deported east to the camps.

2. 2
   Auschwitz

   The death camp where Sophie is forced into the unspeakable choice that will haunt her forever - the buried trauma at the heart of her later life.

3. 3
   Brooklyn

   The rooming house in postwar New York where the survivor Sophie, her lover Nathan and the young writer Stingo form a doomed triangle, and the past finally overwhelms the present.