Chess Story

The film "Chess Story" (2021) is a drama and thriller that tells the story of Dr. Josef Bartok, a lawyer who is arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and imprisoned in solitary confinement for months. To cope with his mental suffering, Bartok becomes obsessed with chess, playing games in his mind and eventually using them as a way to resist the Nazis' demands for confidential information from him. Under the alias Max van Leuwen, Bartok escapes from prison and travels to the USA, where he participates in a Schachturnier (chess tournament) that ends with him winning a prized Armbanduhr. The film's final scenes show Bartok as an inmate in a psychiatric hospital, seemingly unable to distinguish reality from his fantasies of escaping and reunifying with his wife Anna.