Katyn (2007)

Title: Katyn
Original title: Katyn
Year: 2007
Produced in: Kasina Wielka, Poland
Language: Polish, Russian & German
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Scriptwriter: Story: Andrzej Mularczyk. Writers: Przemyslaw Nowakowski , Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Andrzej Wajda
Music: Krzysztof PendereckiCinematography: Pawel EdelmanEditors: Milenia Fiedler, Rafal Listopad
Length: 118 minutes

Awards

Nominated Oscar Best Foreign Language Film of the Year Nominated CEC Award Best Foreign Film (Mejor Película Extranjera) Nominated Czech Lion Best Foreign Language Film (Nejlepsí zahranicní film) Won People's Choice Award Best Feature Film Won European Film Award Prix d'Excellence (Magdalena Biedrzycka ) For costume design. Won Italy Golden Globe Best Distributor (Migliore Distributore) Won Italy Golden GlobeBest European Film (Miglior Film Europeo) read more...

About the Director

Andrzej Wajda is the Academy Award winning director best known for Ziemia obiecana (1975), Czlowiek z zelaza (1981) and Katyn (2007).From 1989 to 1991 Wajda was elected Senator of the Republic of Poland. From 1992 to 1994 he was Member of Presidential Council for Culture. In 1994 he founded the Center of Japanese Art and Technology in Krakow, and was awarded the Order of Rising Sun in Japan (1995). Wajda was President of Polish Film Assoiation (1978-1983). He was Member of "Solidarity" Lech Walesa Council (1981-1989). He won an honorary Oscar (2000) for his contribution to cinema, and an honorary Golden Bear (2006) at the Berlin Film Festival.

Wajda's Katyn (2007) was nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year in 2008, and received many other awards and nominations. The film shows historic events in Katyn during WWII, where Wajda's father was among thousands of Polish officers killed by Soviet communists under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Wajda's film was well received by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who initially opened the facts about Katyn to help people understand each other and overcome the tragic past. "We never hoped to live to see the fall of the Soviet Union, to see Poland as a free country", said Andrzej Wajda.

Comments on the film Katyn

On 17 September 1939, a group of Polish officers and soldiers are imprisoned by the Soviet Army on the border of Poland. Anna and her daughter Nika travel from Krakow to meet her husband and officer Andrzej and they try to convince him to leave the soldiers and escape back home. However, Andrzej refuses to leave the troop and is deported to USSR. Later the Soviet tells that the Polish officers had been massacred by the Germans in the Katyn Forest with a shot on the back of the neck. However Anna retrieves Andrzej's diary and discloses that the soldiers had been actually murdered by the Soviet Army. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil In 1939, the Germans invaded Poland; so do the Soviets, taking more than 10,000 officers prisoner. By the spring, they were executed and buried in the forest of Katyn. Women wait: Ana, her daughter, and her mother-in-law live in hope that Ana's husband Andrej has survived; a general's wife keeps a stiff backbone when the Soviets demand that she accuse the Germans of her husband's death; Agnieszka, a prisoner under the Germans, faces imprisonment in the new post-war Poland for saying her brother died at Soviet hands. Ana's nephew, whose father died at Katyn, is chased by police for defacing a propaganda poster. The corruption of the cover-up poisons the country. Will the truth come out?

Sources

Official Site
http://katyn.netino.pl/en/
The International Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0879843/

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