Katyn

Andrzej Wajda’s movie “Katyn” is the story he has waited a lifetime to tell: “Katyn” is the name of the forest where the Soviets secretly murdered 15,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and professionals over a 3-day period in 1940 (during which a 14-year-old Wajda lost his own father). Stalin’s purpose was to destroy those elements of the population who would be most resistant to Soviet control following WWII. For decades the truth was obfuscated, with the Nazis often blamed for the atrocity. Half a century later, in 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted his nation’s responsibility. In this elegant production, Wajda recreates war-torn Poland and the stories of both the perpetrators and their victims. An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008, it was a huge hit in Poland, playing in nearly every cinema in the country, and selling more than 2.7 million tickets in a nation of only 39 million. “Katyn” is the 82-year-old Andrzej Wajda’s first film in five years. He is best known in the U.S. for his WWII trilogy — A Generation (1954), Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958) — as well as for Man of Marble (1977), Man of Iron (1981) and Danton (1983). Wajda was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2000 and was the subject of a month-long retrospective this past fall at the Film Society of Lincoln Center