Hell or High Water’s Ben Foster stars in the powerfully bleak first trailer for the upcoming HBO biographical drama, The Survivor. Released by the HBO official YouTube channel, The Survivor tells the brutal true story of Harry Haft, a boxer who looks to carry on after fighting to survive in the Holocaust.

Starring Ben Foster as Harry Haft, The Survivor begins when the Nazis invade Poland and Harry Haft is sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp. He is a powerfully built man, so a charming but sadistic Nazi officer offers him an impossible deal: fight fellow prisoners in the boxing ring for the amusement of his captors, or die. The winner of the bout survives to fight again. The loser is shot or sent to the gas chamber. How far will Harry’s will to live take him? What will he do to escape the death all around him?

The Survivor is directed by Rain Man and Good Morning, Vietnam filmmaker Barry Levinson, from a screenplay by Justine Juel Gillmer, and stars Billy Magnussen, Danny DeVito, Vicky Krieps, Peter Sarsgaard, Saro Emirze, Dar Zuzovsky and John Leguizamo alongside Ben Foster.

The trailer offers just a glimpse of the hardships and savagery that Harry Haft faced during his experience surviving the Holocaust, with The Survivor seemingly detailing his life before, during, and after these truly awful events as the boxer fights to come to terms with what he has lived through.

The Survivor had its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2021, and is due to be released on HBO Max on April 27.

Ben Foster Has Proven Time & Again His Ability to Portray Tortured, Powerful Characters

the-survivor
HBO

Initially known for supporting roles in The Punisher, X-Men: The Last Stand, and 30 Days of Night, Ben Foster has slowly proven his affinity for playing powerful, tortured characters. His roles in the likes of the neo-Western crime flick Hell or High Water alongside Chris Pine and the quietly haunting Leave No Trace wonderfully demonstrate how much Foster can say without actually saying a word. Based on the trailer, The Survivor could be Foster’s most powerful performance yet.

Ben Foster will next star opposite Will Smith in the upcoming action thriller Emancipation. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by William N. Collage, Emancipation follows a slave named Peter, who escapes from a Louisiana plantation. Outwitting cold-blooded hunters led by Fassel, he makes his way North, where he joins the Union Army.

Foster will also soon reunite with Hell or High Water co-star Chris Pine for the thriller Violence of Action from STXFilms. Helmed by Swedish director Tarik Saleh, Violence of Action stars Pine as James Harper who, after being involuntarily discharged from the Green Berets, joins a paramilitary organization in order to support his family in the only way he knows how. Harper travels to Berlin with his elite team on a black ops mission to investigate a mysterious threat. Barely into his first assignment, he finds himself alone and hunted across Europe, where he must fight to stay alive long enough to get home and uncover the true motives of those who betrayed him.