“Persona Non Grata”: Gluck Brings Multicultural Perspective to Sugihara Chiune Biopic

Karasawa Toshiaki gives a powerful performance as Sugihara Chiune with the support of an outstanding Polish cast, including Borys Szye as Pesh, a Polish spy who helped Sugihara gather intelligence (left), and Cezary Lukaszewicz as Gudze, a German Lithuanian also employed by the Japanese consulate.

Gluck and his cast receive an enthusiastic ovation at the October 2015 world premiere of Persona Non Grata in Kaunas, Lithuania, where the film’s main action takes place.

Karasawa, Koyuki, and Gluck in front of the Hotel Metropolis in Kaunas, where Sugihara stayed briefly near the end of August 1940, in advance of the consulate’s imminent closure. He continued to write and issue visas from the hotel right up until he left the country at the beginning of September.

Cellin Gluck felt a strong personal connection with the story and historical setting of Persona Non Grata owing to the wartime experience of his Jewish and Japanese American parents and his own experience growing up a foreigner in Japan.