25/05/2026
A review written by Rado Chmiel
Covenant of Blood – How a Polish Brit Teaches Us Our Own History, and a Polish Scouser Returns the Favour
Picture this setup. On one side of the table, you’ve got me – a bloke from Poland who’s spent years weaving himself into the fabric of Merseyside, picking up the local accent, and currently going through bureaucratic hell to prove to the Home Office that he’s worthy of a British passport (which, in this godforsaken year of 2026, costs a staggering £1,839 per person). On the other side, you’ve got him: Patrick Ney. A thoroughbred Brit who did a complete about-face, has been living in Poland since 2010, and holds Polish citizenship granted to him directly by the President of Poland in 2020. When two guys like that meet in Liverpool, the sparks fly naturally. This wasn't some dry, diplomatic visit. This was a twelve-hour publicistic firefight and a deep, shared dive into the immigrant experience.
Patrick came to Liverpool at the invitation of Honorata Mikołajew from the Cinema Social Club, and our portal, UK Live, proudly took on the media patronage for the event. Seeing a man born on British soil bring a film about Polish heroes to Liverpool, talking about them with more passion than half the mates I went to primary school with – well, my local Scouse honour simply wouldn't let me lose face. I had to host him my way, stripping the city of the usual tired clichés about the Beatles, the docks, and football.
I took Patrick down London Road, straight to the Kurdish Bêkas Cafê for a proper Kurdish breakfast, while talking him through the forgotten, working-class history of that street. We walked through Williamson Square, grabbing a quick coffee in the local "Little Italy," and carried on towards Liverpool’s Chinatown, where I shed some light on the history of the oldest Chinese community in Europe. This was my payback. A Polish Brit was teaching me about my identity, and I, a Polish Scouser, was breaking down his British universalism with our fierce, local Liverpool pride.
And then we stepped into the screening room. That’s where the pleasantries ended, and a brutal, emotional knockout began.
The British premiere of the film “Covenant of Blood: The Last Soldiers of World War” took place at the Museum of Liverpool and was brilliantly, passionately hosted by the energetic Honorata Mikołajew. This 45-minute documentary, crafted by the filmmaking duo Patrick Ney and Stefan Tompson, is an absolute visual powerhouse. The dynamic, animated maps instantly triggered a wave of intense personal nostalgia in me. I felt like a kid again, sitting in front of a monitor, bootlegging Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and fighting virtual global communism on my own terms. This modern aesthetic has something raw and primal about it that hits the modern viewer right in the solar plexus.
Yet, on a meritocratic level, there’s no room for cheap public relations here. The research is flawless, and the interviews with the families of the "Cursed Soldiers" (Żołnierze Wyklęci) and historians were conducted with surgical precision, due respect, and immense care. The camera of Patrick and Stefan – creators who have amassed over 300 million views on social media – peers into the darkest corners of Warsaw. We visit authentic sites of martyrdom: the cells at 8 Strzelecka Street, the Rakowiecka prison, and Villa "Jasny Dom", which served as a notorious NKWD detention center.
The viewer is introduced to the fates of General Emil Fieldorf "Nil," Danuta Siedzikówna "Inka," Captain Witold Pilecki, Major Hieronim Dekutowski "Zapora," and Józef Franczak "Laluś." Suddenly, you are hit by the sheer, animalistic brutality of the Communists and the Red Army. We see people trapped in a nightmarish, no-win situation. On paper, they were on the winning side of the war; in reality, they watched their country get torn apart and subjected to yet another bloody occupation. They chose the qoods. They chose to fight, embarking on an impossible campaign where they were tortured and persecuted, but never broken.
This film is heavy. It hurts. And it profoundly provokes. Before the screening, Patrick kept it brief: “This is the first English-language documentary about the Cursed Soldiers, also known as the Indomitable Soldiers. We want to show it around the world now, at various festivals, and also share it with the Polish diaspora. This is a film about our history. I say 'our' because I hold Polish citizenship.”
The film, which had its private premiere at the Warsaw Uprising Museum in December 2025, is now heading to film festivals across the globe, including Austria and the United States. And rightly so, because this story has never before been told to a Western audience in English in a documentary format.
Sitting in a packed room, feeling the thick tension in the crowd, I couldn't shake one bloody bitter question: Why on earth did we need a British filmmaker with a Polish passport to finally show these lives to the world the way they deserve to be shown? Without an ounce of state-sponsored pomposity, without massive government grants – instead, funded by private money, crowd-funded through over 480 micro-donations by Poles from all over the world. Where is the system, and where is official historical diplomacy, when an individual citizen has to do the homework for our state?
After the credits rolled, the room erupted into a thoroughly deserved standing ovation. Post-screening, Patrick took questions from the audience, opening up about his worldview – a unique approach that blends his British roots with a deep Polish sensitivity acquired over his years living in our homeland. A screening like that clears your head. It brings you back down to earth, making you deeply appreciate the fact that you can simply live in a free country. Because there were people who fought and laid down their lives just so future generations could have a choice. And we need storytellers like Patrick and Stefan to keep alive the memory of those the world was meant to forget.
We had to take the edge off those heavy emotions with something equally authentic. After the show, the whole Cinema Social Club crew, along with our guest, moved down behind the Empire Theatre, straight into the legendary Ma Egerton's pub. The spirit of artistic bohemia hangs so thick in that place you could cut it with a knife – after all, the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Sean Connery, Pamela Anderson, and Amy Winehouse used to sit within those very walls. It was there, over a pint and a bowl of traditional, local Scouse stew – which Patrick was trying for the very first time – that the conversations about cinema, history, and upcoming artistic projects went on late into the night.
Saying goodbye to our Polish Brit, the team from Cinema Social Club – the people who threw absolutely everything at this to make the premiere happen – received a review that made every single ounce of effort worth it. He looked at us knowingly and said it straight: “Liverpool has set the bar so high that any other venue on this screening tour is going to find it bloody hard to match it.”
Those words are the ultimate proof that our Liverpool Polish diaspora doesn't just want cheap entertainment – they are starved for proper art and tough, meaningful subjects. Thanks to the initiatives of the Cinema Social Club, we proved that historical memory isn't some boring school assembly; it’s a living, pulsing fabric of our small, local bohemia. Because we might have left Poland, but Poland never left us. And that is the finest, most powerful punchline to the whole day.
