The Way Back

The Way Back movie synopsis: The Way Back is a fact-based story of the escape of soldiers from a Siberian gulag in 1940. It is based on several sources, most notably the Slavomir Rawicz book "The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom." The book is Rawicz's account of being captured by the Red Army in 1939 and his journey to freedom with other inmates. The group crossed the Siberian arctic, the Gobi desert and the Himalayas, finally settling in Tibet and India.

Additional Notes: The film is loosely based on a book titled The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz, depicting his alleged escape from a Siberian gulag and subsequent 4,000-mile walk to freedom in India. Incredibly popular, it sold over 500,000 copies and is credited with inspiring many explorers. In 2006, the book was effectively debunked. The BBC unearthed records (including some written by Rawicz himself) that showed that rather than having escaped from the Gulag, in fact in 1942 he had been released by the USSR. In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish WWII veteran living in the United Kingdom, came forward to claim that Rawicz's story was true, but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. In addition in 1942 a group of Siberian Gulag escapees reportedly walked to India. However these claims too have been questioned and currently are the subject of active discussion. Given such concerns, the director Peter Weir himself now describes "The Way Back" as "essentially a fictional film."

• Wikipedia:  The Way Back
  
• Watch the trailer below!