Film Forum

Poland, 2007
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring Artur Zmijewski, Maja Ostaszewska
Approx. 122 mins.

In 1940, a year after the Nazi invasion of Poland, Soviet forces secretly murdered more than 15,000 Polish officers, intellectuals, and professionals over a three-day period. Stalin’s purpose was to destroy elements of the population who might resist post-war Soviet control. Andrzej Wajda’s father was among the victims, and the Soviet role in the massacre was hidden for decades. Wajda’s unflinching, epic film dramatizes the human story, of both perpetrators and victims. The film was a massive box office success in Poland, provoking a mix of catharsis and controversy. And it was an Oscar® nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.

Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film and The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

Reviews

“With his new film KATYŃ, Poland’s greatest filmmaker caps his career with the story he waited most of his life to tell.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“Wajda has made one of the movies’ most potent evocations of a gruesome twentieth-century ritual... Wajda has exorcised feelings that may have burdened him since he was a teenager: his own father, Jakub Wajda, a decorated fighter in the First World War, was among the officers killed. This tenacious artist has now given his father a proper memorial and has reasserted, with power and grace, the history and identity of his nearly effaced country.”
 – David Denby, The New Yorker

“A film that’s grand, sorrowful, masterful, moving, and (in the end) resolute about bringing reality close to the touch.”
– The Nation