Marketing materials for the film One Life, which stars Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn as Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 children from the Nazis at the start of the second world war, have been amended after criticism over potential Jewish erasure.

There was a backlash to the apparent lack of acknowledgment in the plot synopsis that most of the children taken to England on the Kindertransport trains organised by Winton – a stockbroker distressed by the plight of the young people on a trip to Prague in 1939 – were Jewish.

The term “central European” had found widespread usage in descriptions of the film, notably in a tweet by retailer HMV and by a number of independent cinemas exhibiting the film. The term was also used in the description of the film on the BFI London film festival website, where it premiered in October.

However, it appears that this was not the wording euphemistically adopted by the film’s UK distributors, Warner Bros and See-Saw Films, although they also did not use the term “Jewish”.

On the Warner Bros website, the children are now described as “predominantly Jewish”, which is understood to be the term favoured by the film-makers, who were conscious that 100 or so of the children were political refugees rather than Jewish.

A source close to the film suggested to Variety that the term “central European” was likely picked up by outlets such as HMV via an unauthorised third party on IMDb, the Internet Movie Database.

They added that the events of 7 October, in which 1,200 people were killed by Hamas, did not have any bearing on the marketing materials.

• This article was amended on 5 January 2024 because an earlier version referred to 1,200 Jews being killed by Hamas on 7 October, when there has not been a full official demographic breakdown of people killed.