Andrezj Munk’s tragic and untimely death during the making of Passenger has not diminished the film’s reputation as a masterful realization of the director’s vision. A team of colleagues led by Witold Lesiewicz assembled the posthumous work, using the footage that had been completed, the director’s still photographs, and voiceover commentary. On an ocean liner, a German emigré—a former Nazi prison guard—notices a woman who may once have been her charge at Auschwitz. The encounter triggers painful memories that become desperate attempts at self-justification. One of the most audacious fictions ever made about the Holocaust, Passenger investigates memory’s function as protector of the self as it bridges the chasm of past and present.

Forty years after Munk’s death, Andrzej Brzozowski reconstructs the events that took place during the course of shooting Passenger, on which he served as an assistant. Weaving together archival footage, excerpts from the film, letters from Munk to his wife, and interviews with some of the director’s collaborators, Brzozowski creates a haunting tribute to the director as he conveys a sense of the unease that haunted the production.