“Big Sonia,” the award-winning 2016 film about local Holocaust survivor and tailor Sonia Warshawski, will be rescreened at the Glenwood Arts Theater along with the filmmaker’s new movie, “Uncle Bully’s Surf Skool.”
The encore screening of “Big Sonia” will take place on Saturday, April 20, at 1 p.m. at the Glenwood Arts Theater (3707 W 95th St, Overland Park, KS 66206).
The film was created by Warshawski’s granddaughter Leah Warshawski and her husband, Todd Soliday. They will be at the screening and answer audience questions after the film along with Sonia Warshawski’s daughter Regina Kort.
“Big Sonia” follows Warshawki and her tailor shop, John’s Tailoring (which closed last year), exploring how Sonia’s background affects her, her family, and her ethos in the present. At age 15, Sonia watched her mother enter the gas chamber doors in the Majdanek death camp. She endured slave labor and the hells of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen. Upon the camp’s liberation, she was accidentally shot through her chest.
Leah Warshawski and Soliday’s new film, “Uncle Bully’s Surf Skool,” will be screened a day earlier (Friday, April 19) at 7 p.m. at Glenwood Arts Theater, also followed by a Q&A. Filmed in Lahaina, Hawaii, the film is about Maui surf instructor Bull Koder and his mentorship of underserved youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Warshawski and Soliday began filming Koder’s work with local children who lived in Lahaina encampments and his free surf lessons during the pandemic in 2020.
The August 8, 2023, wildfires in Maui destroyed Bully’s home and business, left several of the film’s crew and cast homeless, and threatened many of the encampments where the children lived. After the fires, Warshawski and Soliday went back to film the ongoing story of resilience.
“Bully and Sonia are two incredible humans making their mark on the world in unique ways,” Warshawski said. “We’re thrilled to be coming back to our favorite movie theater in the Midwest.”
