Film Forum

Poland, 1990
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay by Agnieszka Holland
Starring Wojciech Pszoniak, Ewa Dałkowska, Teresa Budzisz-Krzyżanowska, Marzena Trybała
Approx. 118 mins.

Janusz Korczak was a renowned doctor, teacher, and author who ran a Jewish orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto, and ultimately sacrificed his life to stay with them until his deportation to Treblinka. With a bracingly unsentimental script by Agnieszka Holland, and stunning black-and-white cinematography by Robby Müller intercut with actual archival footage, Wajda recreates life in the ghetto in vivid detail. Wajda fought for years to get this film made, claiming “Jewish themes in Polish culture have been virtually banned for twenty years.”

Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film and The Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Films, donated by Leon Constantiner and Family

Reviews

“This tale backlights like few others the complete darkness represented by the Nazis—crystal-clear goodness was swallowed up with every other human quality and there was nothing to be done about it. The film about the most defiant and heroic Pole of the WWII years leaves behind a devastating sense of hopelessness, of watching evil easily win, on a cosmic scale if only for the time being.”
 – Michael Atkinson, Sight and Sound