Confession Bets on Marhoul at Warsaw’s Main Race

Confession premieres October 15 in the Warsaw Film Festival’s 15-film international competition, a Stalin-era prison drama written by Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro. Rob Lowe and James Franco lead a veteran American cast for Czech director Václav Marhoul, whose last feature spent years on the festival circuit. The picture then plays 100 theaters nationwide for one night on November 11, the same day it debuts on Daily Wire’s streaming service.

That festival slot is the part of the rollout the American argument has mostly skipped. Warsaw is listing the film under Marhoul’s name, as Wyznanie, in the race for Grand Prix. Shapiro wrote it. The company that paid for it is still fighting a second, louder production in Montana.

Warsaw’s 15-Film Race and a Lubyanka Two-Hander

Poland’s culture ministry put Marhoul’s Wyznanie among 15 films in international competition at the 42nd Warsaw Film Festival, which runs October 9 through 18. The jury will also give a directing prize and a special award that can go to an actor, writer, cinematographer, editor, composer, or producer.

THE WARSAW FESTIVAL AROUND THE FILM

• The slate: 190 films, including 132 features and 58 shorts, across 330 screenings.
• The premieres: 102 titles arrive as world, international, or regional premieres.
• The race: Confession screens as Wyznanie in the 15-film Grand Prix competition.
• The dates: The festival opened October 9 and closes October 18 in eight Warsaw venues.

The logline is a closed-room story. In Stalin’s 1938 Moscow, a former literature professor named Alexei is arrested and taken to Lubyanka Prison, charged with conspiring with a dissident priest. His interrogator is Vladimir, a brilliant former student. Lowe plays Alexei. Franco plays Vladimir.

Daily Wire kept the shoot quiet until a teaser landed October 13. For a publisher that usually sells movies as culture-war events, the Warsaw booking is a different kind of ask. It puts the film in front of a jury that does not answer to an American talk-show audience.

Marhoul Left a War Epic for a Single Room

Marhoul’s 2019 film The Painted Bird premiered in competition at Venice, drew walkouts at Toronto, and made the Oscar shortlist for international feature. It was a long, black-and-white war picture spoken in Interslavic so no Slavic country would have to own the villagers on screen. Confession is the inverse: English, color, one location, talk as the weapon.

He said so himself when the teaser went out.

From a director’s perspective, this film was a truly great challenge for me. I ventured into a genre I hadn’t explored before: an intimate, dialogue-driven psychological drama set in a single location. Together with cinematographer Peter Menzies, I sought the most sensitive approach to directing and visual style, one that matched the story and characters.

Václav Marhoul, director, in the film’s announcement

That is the stakeholder the American coverage keeps treating as a credit line. Warsaw is not hosting a Shapiro lecture. It is hosting a Marhoul chamber piece, and the festival page names him, not the financier, as the author of the entry. Actors of Lowe and Leigh’s vintage do not usually cross a political picket for a pundit’s first produced script. They do it for a director who already survived Venice with a three-hour atrocity film.

Shapiro still owns the themes in the company’s own copy. Daily Wire says the drama deals with communism, materialism, and “the necessity of God in our lives.” He called the result “deeply rooted in faith, morality, virtue, hardship, and most of all, what it means to be a free and decent human being.” The festival will judge the faces in the room, not the blog post.

Who Is in the Confession Cast?

The billed ensemble is Rob Lowe, James Franco, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Nick Nolte, Richard Brake, Emile Hirsch, Brad Dourif, and Dean Norris. Five of those names are Academy Award nominees: Franco for 127 Hours, Leigh for The Hateful Eight, Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog, Nolte for The Prince of the Tides, and Dourif for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Lowe is also a producer.

THE BILLED ENSEMBLE

Only two roles were named in the materials released with the teaser. The rest of the company is being sold as proof of seriousness, which is a different pitch from Daily Wire’s earlier features. Those films argued in public. This one argues by résumé.

The objection that actually stuck after the trailer was not that too many famous people had signed on. It was that Shapiro’s name is on the script, and that Franco’s return looks like a repair job. Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, who saw the finished cut, tried to close that gap in public.

I’m really excited that we made this movie. The cast is exceptional. Performances are very good. James Franco surprised me. It’s a serious, intelligent piece of art with a real cast and a talented director with a distinct visual style. Exactly the kind of film we should be making.

Matt Walsh, Daily Wire host, on X

Walsh’s line does more work than the marketing. If Franco is the performance people remember, the film leaves Warsaw as an actors’ picture. If the dialogue sounds like a monologue from Shapiro’s show, it leaves as a brand extension with better lighting.

Santa Clarita Stands In for 1938 Moscow

The production never went to Russia. IMDb lists a runtime of 2 hours 12 minutes, an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and a single filming base: Santa Clarita Studios in Santa Clarita, California, with the note that it was all shot in studio. The teaser package added that the picture was captured entirely on 35mm.

Peter Menzies Jr., the cinematographer on Die Hard with a Vengeance, A Time to Kill, and Clash of the Titans, shot it. Vincent Reynaud handled production design. Jeff Dawn, who won an Oscar for makeup on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, did makeup and prosthetics. David Guglielmo cast the film and is also among the producers.

THE CRAFT BENCH BEHIND THE CAST

• The negative: Shot on 35mm at Santa Clarita Studios, not on location in Moscow.
• The camera: Peter Menzies Jr., an ASC member known for large-scale American action, photographing a single-room drama.
• The face work: Jeff Dawn, an Oscar winner for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, on makeup and prosthetics.
• The producers: Dallas Sonnier for Bonfire Legend, Travis Mills, Shapiro, Sean Calvano, Rob Lowe, Amanda Presmyk, Lillian Campbell, and Guglielmo.

Sonnier’s Bonfire Legend is the same shop tied to Daily Wire’s other current features. The craft list is how Confession tries to look like a real studio film rather than a streaming extra. Celluloid, an Oscar-winning makeup chair, and a DP who once lit John McTiernan’s New York are the tell. They are also a bet that festival viewers will watch the image before they read the financier.

The Pawn Shop Bind on Danny Trejo

While Confession was being unveiled as prestige, Daily Wire’s other active picture was still generating the kind of noise the company usually courts. Pawn Shop, a thriller built around an ICE officer, drew protests during a shoot in Livingston, Montana. Daily Wire has described intimidation and death threats around that production. Jonathan Majors’s earlier Daily Wire film, Run Hide Fight: Infidels, also faced temporary shut downs over its subject matter.

Danny Trejo, 82, is in Pawn Shop. After backlash, he posted that he is “a proud Mexican,” “obviously pro-immigrant,” and “not pro-ICE,” adding, “I am an actor. My job is to tell a story.” His son, Gilbert Trejo, went further in an Instagram story. He said the agent pitched “a complicated story about a complicated time, where everyone looks bad except you, the hardworking Mexican shop owner who just wants peace,” and that the family learned Shapiro was involved about two weeks into shooting.

“My 82 year old dad has never heard of Ben Shapiro, I had to explain to him who that is, and what kind of guy he is,” Gilbert wrote. He also said his father “contractually can’t badmouth him, the film, or walk away without being sued for breach of contract,” and “couldn’t even release the statement he wanted to.” He called his father “handcuffed to this stupid project.” The production has not confirmed the timeline or the contract language.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Trejo’s own line: He says he is pro-immigrant and not pro-ICE, and that acting is his job.
• The son’s claim: Gilbert says the Shapiro link surfaced two weeks into the shoot and that the contract blocks criticism or an exit.
• The other film: Confession is a separate picture, already finished, with a named festival premiere.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The contract: The alleged gag and breach terms have not been published or independently verified.
• The pitch: Daily Wire has not answered Gilbert’s account of how the role was sold.

A movie titled Confession, about a prisoner pressed to betray a priest, is arriving in the same news cycle as an actor’s son saying the company will sue if his father speaks. That is not a metaphor the marketing invented. It is the two-track studio Daily Wire is actually running: a Warsaw competition drama on 35mm, and a street-level ICE thriller whose lead, according to his family, cannot talk.

What the Trailer Puts on the Record

The official teaser, posted October 13 on Daily Wire’s YouTube channel, stays inside the cell. One inmate asks Alexei if he has ever seen a child starve to death. Alexei says no. The inmate says he has. The rest is faces, a priest, and the threat of a confession that will cost someone everything.

Lowe’s published line is simpler than Shapiro’s. “This is an incredible story of the human spirit and its survival against those who would crush it,” he said. That is the human-spirit version of a film whose plot is an interrogation. The teaser does not mention ICE, Montana, or a culture war. It mentions hunger, God, and a student who now holds the file.

Online, the argument split along a craft line, not a boycott line. People who already like Daily Wire treated the cast as a win. People who do not like Shapiro treated the screenwriter credit as the joke, and Franco as a man taking work after a long freeze. Leigh, Nolte, Smit-McPhee, and Lowe barely figured in that fight. The hidden names in the American argument are still Marhoul and Menzies, which is a strange fate for the two people who actually control how the movie looks.

100 Theaters on November 11, Then the Paywall

After Warsaw, the commercial plan is narrow on purpose. Confession plays 100 U.S. theaters for one night on November 11, then lives on Daily Wire’s subscription platform the same day. There is no announced multi-week run, no wide distributor, and no claim that the film will sit in multiplexes beside studio dramas. The theatrical date is a one-night event timed to a paywall.

That is how a festival movie becomes a membership perk. Warsaw gives Marhoul a jury. November 11 gives Shapiro a premiere clip. The actors give both men cover they did not have on Pawn Shop, where the face on the poster is an 82-year-old man whose son says he cannot quit. Whether Confession plays as cinema in Poland will be clearer once the competition awards land. The American release does not wait on a prize. It waits on November 11, 100 screens, and a login.