Hospital of the Transfiguration

The narrative unfolds in the late stages of 1939, as World War II escalates and Poland endures occupation. The hospital is slated for liquidation by the occupying power, turning staff and patients into targets of political violence. The period is defined by fear, clandestine resistance, and intense moral tests for medical professionals.

The setting centers on a sealed psychiatric hospital that becomes a stage for moral conflict during the Nazi occupation. The institution houses patients and medical staff under the shadow of ideology and wartime brutality. Its corridors witness experiments, power struggles, and the looming threat of liquidation as German forces tighten control.

⚖️ Ethics

The film tests the limits of medical and professional ethics under an oppressive regime. Stefan questions the practitioners’ methods, while Rygier and peers justify coercive treatments as necessary for survival. The tension reveals how authority and ideology can distort care and erode patient dignity.

🧪 Medical Ethics

The hospital becomes a laboratory of questionable methods: humiliating procedures, experimental practices, and surgeries driven by prestige or profit rather than patient welfare. Stefan’s humane approach clashes with the others’ willingness to sacrifice patients for perceived scientific progress. The result is a critique of how medicine can be weaponized in wartime.

🪖 Occupation & Power

The arrival of SS Captain Thiesdorf marks the political pivot from clinical care to control and liquidation. The staff’s complicity and fear illuminate how occupying forces weaponize institutions. The hospital becomes a battleground where authority, loyalty, and survival collide.

🌫️ Disillusionment & Escape

Stefan’s optimism gives way to disillusionment as he witnesses medical errors and the futility of idealism under totalitarian rule. The finale, with arrests, suicides, and a boy’s death, underscores the human cost of war and the impossibility of saving everyone. The fog in the forest mirrors the fate of those trying to flee truth.