Netflix is set to release one of the most ambitious European television productions in recent years, “Heweliusz.” Far from a simple disaster drama, the series delves into one of the deepest wounds in Poland’s modern history to explore universal themes of grief, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of accountability. Inspired by the sinking of the MS Jan Heweliusz—the country’s deadliest peacetime maritime disaster—the production moves beyond a literal reconstruction to offer a complex, multi-layered narrative. The series doesn’t just chronicle the tragedy at sea; it dedicates much of its energy to exploring a second, quieter but equally devastating catastrophe that unfolded on land, where the victims’ families faced bureaucratic indifference, suspicions of a cover-up, and a fight for the truth that would span decades.
The narrative structure of “Heweliusz” is intentionally dual, merging a survival drama with an intense courtroom saga. The real intrigue, as the series’ focus suggests, lies not only in the icy waves of the Baltic but in the bitter aftermath on shore—a labyrinth of cover-ups, corporate failures, and official cowardice. This narrative approach is no accident. The series comes from the acclaimed creative team behind High Water, a production that already proved its ability to dramatize national tragedies with profound historical sensitivity. Just as its predecessor used the 1997 flood to analyze the institutional dysfunctions of the era, “Heweliusz” uses the 1993 disaster as a catalyst to dissect a crucial and turbulent moment: Poland’s transition from communism to democracy. In this context, state institutions struggled to find a new paradigm of accountability, often failing those they were meant to protect. The sinking of the ferry thus becomes a powerful metaphor for a nation navigating the wreckage of an old regime while struggling to build a future based on trust and justice.
The Dual Plot: A Storm at Sea, Another on Land
The narrative of “Heweliusz” unfolds on two parallel fronts that intertwine to build a story of extraordinary richness and complexity. On one hand, the series immerses the viewer in the heart of the catastrophe, recreating with harrowing realism the desperate fight for survival aboard the MS Jan Heweliusz on the night of January 13-14, 1993. Using cutting-edge cinematic technology, the creators aim to deliver a faithful portrayal of the events that unfolded amid a hurricane-force storm on the Baltic Sea, capturing the intensity and terror of those final moments.
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The series’ emotional and thematic core, however, lies in its second storyline: the battle waged on land. This plot follows the survivors, widows, and victims’ families on their painful journey after the tragedy. Their grief is compounded by a system that seems to turn its back on them, forcing them to confront a systemic indifference that compels them to fight not only for memory but also for the dignity of their loved ones. What begins as a search for answers progressively transforms into a full-blown legal saga. The series documents the meticulous investigation, the maze of legal proceedings, and the frustrating confrontation with a bureaucratic apparatus that appears more interested in protecting itself than in uncovering the truth. A particular focus is placed on the women—wives, mothers, and daughters—who, amid the chaos of Poland’s political and social transformation, are forced to lead this fight, confronting not only loss but also the “brutality of the system.”
This narrative design creates a powerful contrast. At sea, the characters face the blind, impersonal fury of nature—a chaotic and elemental force. On land, however, the struggle is against a man-made system, a web of institutions that, instead of offering protection and justice, becomes an antagonist through obfuscation, negligence, and silence. By juxtaposing these two battles, the series suggests that the systemic failure in offices and courtrooms is an even deeper and more unforgivable tragedy than the storm on the Baltic. While the sinking was an act of nature magnified by human error, the subsequent denial of clear and transparent justice was the result of a series of deliberate human decisions, turning a survival drama into a reflection on the very essence of responsibility and justice.
An All-Star Cast for a National Wound
To bring a story of such magnitude and national resonance to life, “Heweliusz” has assembled a cast of some of Poland’s most prestigious actors, whose performances anchor the historical drama in a profound emotional truth.
Michał Żurawski plays Binter, a central character who embodies the moral conflict within the maritime community itself. Binter is a sailor torn between loyalty to the memory of his late mentor—a figure presumably connected to the ship’s command—and his compelling need to uncover the truth, even if it means jeopardizing his career and confronting his peers. His dilemma is heightened by the presence of two legends of Polish acting, Jan Englert and Magdalena Zawadzka, who play his parents, adding a generational weight to his internal struggle.
Magdalena Różczka takes on the role of Jolanta Ułasiewicz, the wife of the ferry’s captain, Andrzej Ułasiewicz. After the catastrophe, her character is thrown into a public battle not only for the truth but also to defend the honor of her husband, whom initial investigations attempted to blame for the disaster. Różczka personifies the tenacity and resilience of the families who refused to accept the official version. To prepare for her role, the actress met with the real Jolanta Ułasiewicz, an encounter that, in her own words, “gave her wings” to approach the character with the utmost authenticity and respect.
The two protagonists symbolically represent the two fronts of the battle for truth. Binter, as a member of the system, personifies the internal struggle—the dilemma of a witness who must choose between his community’s code of silence and the moral imperative of the truth. His journey explores the challenges of reform from within. On the other hand, Jolanta Ułasiewicz, as a civilian outside the maritime and legal power structures, embodies the external struggle of the ordinary citizen demanding accountability from powerful and opaque institutions. Their parallel paths offer a complete portrait of the search for justice, demonstrating that it requires both pressure from the outside and courage from within.
The cast is rounded out by high-caliber figures such as Borys Szyc as Captain Ułasiewicz, whose character becomes the epicenter of the post-disaster controversy, and a strong supporting cast that includes Tomasz Schuchardt, Konrad Eleryk, and Justyna Wasilewska, among others. This constellation of talent underscores the project’s importance within Polish cinematography, treating it not just as an entertainment series but as a first-rate cultural event.
Behind the Scenes: The Most Ambitious Production in Modern Poland
“Heweliusz” stands out not only for its narrative depth but also for a production scale that positions it as “the largest and most complex series production in Poland in recent years.” The technical and logistical effort behind the series is a testament to its ambition to recreate a national tragedy with the fidelity and visual impact it deserves.
The production figures are telling: the project involved over 120 actors with dialogue, a deployment of 3,000 extras to populate both the ferry scenes and the sequences on land, and a technical crew of over 140 people working behind the cameras. Filming spanned 106 days, between January and August 2024, covering a multitude of locations across Poland, including key sites from the real story such as Świnoujście (the ferry’s departure port), Szczecin, Gdynia, and Warsaw, firmly anchoring the fiction in the geography of memory.
The greatest technical challenge was undoubtedly the recreation of the maritime catastrophe. The series features over 130 disaster scenes, filmed in a meticulous three-stage process to achieve unprecedented realism. First, on a “Dry Set,” replicas of the ferry’s passenger corridors and cabins were built on mobile platforms capable of tilting to simulate the ship’s list without water. Second, for scenes on the deck and bridge during the storm, the production team in Warsaw developed an innovative system of suspended sets on a “Wet Set.” A 17-meter-long replica of the bridge was hung from a special crane to simulate the pounding of the waves, while other structures could tilt up to 90 degrees, recreating the ferry’s capsizing in controlled but extremely realistic conditions. Finally, the most complex scenes, requiring actors to interact with large bodies of water, were filmed at LITES FILM STUDIOS in Brussels, one of Europe’s most advanced aquatic facilities. In a pool of nearly 16,000 square feet and up to 33 feet deep, giant propellers, water cannons, and cranes capable of lifting 25 tons were used to simulate the night of the tragedy, the rescue on life rafts, and the final sinking—feats impossible to shoot on the open sea.
This monumental technical effort was always in service of a clear artistic vision and a deep sense of responsibility. Director Jan Holoubek highlighted the “enormous responsibility and enormous work” the project entailed, which required “great determination” from a team that worked for months in extreme conditions, often at night and on the water.
For his part, screenwriter Kasper Bajon expressed the weight of his duty to the victims and their families: “I felt a huge responsibility not to disappoint them—to build from what I heard a story that would convey their experience with respect and authenticity,” he stated, after meeting with many of those affected by the tragedy.
Finally, producer Anna Kępińska framed the series as an act of preserving historical memory. “I am very proud that we told the story of Heweliusz,” she declared, “because during production, I realized that this story is not as widely known as I thought. And it’s fantastic that the series can, to some extent, preserve this memory.”
The creative team behind this monumental production is led by director Jan Holoubek, screenwriter Kasper Bajon, and producer Anna Kępińska. The cinematic vision was captured by director of photography Bartłomiej Kaczmarek, with a score composed by Jan Komar. The main cast includes Michał Żurawski, Magdalena Różczka, Borys Szyc, Tomasz Schuchardt, Konrad Eleryk, Justyna Wasilewska, Jan Englert, and Magdalena Zawadzka.
The Historical Context: The True Tragedy of the MS Jan Heweliusz
To understand the magnitude of the Netflix project, it is essential to know the real story that inspires it: a chain of negligence, ignored warnings, and a tragedy that could have been avoided.
On the night of January 14, 1993, the cargo and passenger ferry MS Jan Heweliusz was en route from Świnoujście, Poland, to Ystad, Sweden. On board were 64 people, including crew and passengers, mostly truck drivers. The ship sailed directly into the heart of Storm Verena, a hurricane with winds reaching 100-112 mph and waves up to 20 feet high. Around 4:10 a.m., the ferry began to list dangerously. The cargo securing systems on the vehicle decks failed, and trucks and train cars began to slide, fatally destabilizing the vessel. A mayday call was sent at 4:40 a.m., but it was too late. At 5:12 a.m., the MS Jan Heweliusz capsized and sank in the icy waters of the Baltic, about 15 miles off the coast of the German island of Rügen. Of the 64 people on board, only 9 crew members survived. 55 people, including 20 crew members and all 35 passengers, lost their lives.
The storm was the trigger, but not the root cause of the catastrophe. Launched in 1977, the MS Jan Heweliusz had such a troubled history that it had earned the nickname “the floating coffin.” In its 15 years of service, the ship had been involved in nearly 30 serious accidents, including collisions, engine failures, and a near-capsizing.
A turning point in its safety record occurred in September 1986, when a severe fire devastated one of its decks. The repair that followed was, according to multiple sources, illegal and reckless: instead of replacing the damaged steel structures, 60 to 70 tons of concrete were poured to level the deck. This solution not only added considerable weight to the ship but also severely compromised its center of gravity and already precarious stability.
This cascade of systemic failures and corporate negligence culminated in the days before its final voyage. The ferry’s stern gate was damaged during a docking maneuver in Ystad. Although the captain requested that the ship be taken out of service for proper repair, the owners ordered a makeshift fix and instructed it to continue sailing. The MS Jan Heweliusz set off on its final journey with a history of known failures, compromised stability from an illegal repair, and a critical fault that had only been patched. The tragedy was not a simple accident but the almost inevitable consequence of a long chain of decisions where profitability was prioritized over safety.
The drama continued on land. An initial investigative commission established by the Polish government was suspended in March 1993 without issuing a conclusive report. Years later, on January 26, 1999, the Maritime Chamber of Appeals in Gdynia issued a controversial verdict: while acknowledging the ship’s poor technical condition, it also blamed the deceased captain, Andrzej Ułasiewicz, for deciding to sail in an unseaworthy vessel—a conclusion the families always considered a way to deflect responsibility from the shipowners and regulatory bodies.
The families’ fight for justice did not stop, and eventually, it found a voice in a higher authority. On March 3, 2005, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) delivered a landmark ruling. The court concluded that the official Polish investigation into the sinking had not been impartial and ordered the Polish state to compensate the victims’ relatives. This ECHR resolution was not only a moral victory for the families but also validated their suspicions that the national investigation had been flawed, providing the factual and dramatic basis on which much of the judicial narrative of the “Heweliusz” series is built.
An Act of Cultural Memory in Post-Communist Poland
“Heweliusz” transcends the historical drama genre to become an act of cultural memory, a work that not only recounts a tragic event but also uses it as a prism to examine a defining period in Polish history. The series is set in the Poland of the early 1990s, a nation in the midst of a chaotic transition. In that decade, the country was shedding the structures of the communist regime to embrace democracy and a market economy—a process full of opportunities but also of disorientation, corruption, and a power vacuum where old practices of opacity and lack of accountability still lingered. The story of the Heweliusz, with its aging infrastructure, questionable business practices, and institutions incapable of ensuring safety and justice, serves as a microcosm of the challenges facing Polish society as a whole.
The connection to High Water is fundamental to understanding its creators’ intent. Both series, set in the same decade, use a national catastrophe as a starting point to explore recurring themes: institutional incompetence, the clash between expert knowledge and entrenched bureaucracy, and the struggle of ordinary citizens against a dysfunctional state that often sees them as an obstacle. This approach reveals a consistent authorial voice, interested in unearthing the complexities of that formative period of the Third Polish Republic.
By positioning itself as a work of cultural memory, “Heweliusz” seeks to ensure that the memory of the tragedy and, above all, the subsequent fight for justice, does not fade. As producer Anna Kępińska noted, the story is not as universally known as it should be, and the series has the potential to etch it into the collective consciousness of a new generation. More than a simple tale of a shipwreck, “Heweliusz” stands as a tribute to the victims and a sharp analysis of the interplay between tragedy, politics, and unwavering human resilience. The series is expected to reignite public debate on maritime safety, corporate responsibility, and the enduring legacy of an investigation that required the intervention of an international court to acknowledge its lack of impartiality.
Release Information
The miniseries “Heweliusz” premieres on Netflix on November 5.
