Film Forum

Ziemia obiecana
Poland, 1975
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrej Seweryn, Kalin Jedrusik
Approx. 169 mins.

The rise of the industrial era and the capitalist boom it engendered are at the core of Wajda’s epic adaptation of the novel by 1924 Nobel Prize winner W. S. Reymont. The film charts the rise and fall of three ambitious tycoons, Karol, a Polish nobleman, Maks, a German hoping to improve on the fate of his father who ran a failing old-time mill, and Moryc, who appears to be disdained except for his valuable connections. Exposing the ways that workers are exploited for the sake of financial growth, the film builds to a powerful climax that connects it to economic conflicts that were simmering in Poland at the time it was made.

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

Reviews

“The excitement and joy felt by the ‘heroes’ as they plan their future as factory owners is embellished by green-forested, pastoral scenes, exemplifying the traditional joys of ordered life among the gentility, so that contrasting looks at the degradation and gloom of the factory workers and their exploitation by greedy industrialists, are like visual descriptions from the worlds of Zola and Dickens.”
– Albert Johnson, “Letter from Cannes,” 1975