Filming to begin on Polanski movie

POTSDAM, Germany — Filming is scheduled to begin Monday at the Babelsberg studios, just outside Berlin, on Roman Polanski's new film, "The Pianist."

Adrien Brody will play the lead role in the movie, based on the autobiography of Polish composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, Polanski told reporters Thursday.

Brody previously appeared in Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam."

Szpilman was one of 400,000 Polish Jews whom the Nazis crowded into the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. He was one of the few people to remain there, in hiding, after the 1943 uprising in which Jews held Nazi troops at bay for weeks.

Shortly before the end of World War II, he was discovered by a German officer, who helped shelter him and gave him food.

Szpilman died last year.

Polanski, 67, the director of "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown," also escaped the Nazis as a child in Poland. His mother died at Auschwitz.

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