Andrzej WajdaFilmography

Katyn

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski, Andrzej Chyra, Danuta Stenka, Jan Englert

Synopsis: Celebrated Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda takes the helm for this Oscar-nominated drama detailing the harrowing events surrounding the 1940 massacre of captured Polish army officers in the Katyn Forest. A unique blend of conventional narrative and documentary-style filmmaking, Katyn opens in the Read More

Primo Levi's Journey

Actors: Andrzej Wajda, Ruslana Bilozir, Modesto Ferrarini, Mario Rigoni Stern, Chris Cooper, Umberto Orsini

Synopsis: Primo Levi's harrowing memoir If This Is a Man appeared in the U.S. in 1959 as Survival in Auschwitz; historians now regard it as the most critically important written conveyance of the horrors within the Nazi concentration camps. But the account in that text only represents half of Levi's story. Read More

Solidarity, Solidarity

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Zemsta

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Janusz Gajos, Andrzej Seweryn, Agata Buzek, Rafal Krolikowski, Roman Polanski

Synopsis: One of the most important figures in the Polish cinema, director Andrzej Wajda, teams up with the nation's most famous filmmaking expatriate, Roman Polanski, in this light comedy based on a perennially popular stage farce by Aleksandr Fredo. Czesnik (Janusz Gajos) and Rejent (Andrzej Seweryn) are Read More

Wyrok na Franciszka Klosa

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Miroslaw Baka, Maja Komorowska, Grazyna Blecka-Kolska, Andrzej Chyra, Krzysztof Globisz

Synopsis: Based on the book by Stanislaw Rembek, Wyrok na Franciszka Klosa (The Condemnation of Franciszek Klos) was made for Polish TV by director Andrzej Wajda. During WWII, Klos (Miroslaw Baka) works as a policemen who helps the occupying Nazi soldiers in his village. Against the better judgment of his Read More

The Lesson of Polish Cinema

Crew: Director

The Condemnation of Franciszek Klos

Crew: Director

Pan Tadeusz

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Boguslaw Linda, Daniel Olbrychski, Andrzej Seweryn, Grazyna Szapolowska, Marek Kondrat, Alicja Bachleda-Curus

Synopsis: Legendary Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda adapts a nationally treasured epic poem to the silver screen. For 400 years, Lithuania and Poland were linked, until the country was partitioned in 1795 by aggressive nations at its borders -- Russia, Prussia, and the Austrian empire. At that point, the Read More

Bigda idzie

Crew: Director

Panna Nikt

Crew: Director

Actors: Anna Mucha, Anna Powierza, Anna Wielgucka

Synopsis: Andrzej Wajda directed this metaphoric coming-of-age story. Marysia (Anna Wielgucka) is a shy and withdrawn 15-year-old girl whose family moves from a small town to a large city. Marysia feels like an outcast until she meets Kasia (Anna Mucha), a bright and talented girl who takes Marysia under Read More

Wielki Tydzien

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Andrzej Wajda, the most acclaimed Polish filmmaker of the post-WWII era, returned from exile to make films again in Poland in the 1990s, including this saga based on the novel by Jerzy Andrzjewski. The English translation is Holy Week, and the film is set during the week before Easter in WWII Read More

Miss Nobody

Crew: Director

Nastazja

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Tamasaburo Bando, Toshiyuki Nagashima

Synopsis: In this truly unique film, Andrzej Wajda, takes the final scene from Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" and then has two Kabuki- trained actors perform it in Japanese. The film was shot in 13 days on location in Warsaw's Pac Palace. The story focuses upon the conversations and memories of two very Read More

Pierscionek Z Orlem W Koronie

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Cezary Pazura, Adrianna Biedrzynska, Piotr Bajor, Miroslaw Baka

Synopsis: World War II buffs may know of the rebellion against the Nazi occupiers of Poland in 1944, but the story may be less familiar elsewhere. It is called "The Warsaw Uprising." In addition, though the Polish communist authorities allowed certain films to be made about that brave (but futile) effort Read More

Korczak

Crew: Director

Actors: Wojciech Pszoniak, Ewa Dalkowska, Piotr Kozlowski, Marzena Trybala, Wojciech Klata

Synopsis: The life of Polish pediatrician Janusz Korczak (Wojtek Pszoniak) is the subject of Andrzej Wajda'a docudrama. Also known as an author who wrote primarily for young readers, Korczak's name became legend as a result of the Jewish orphanage he established in Warsaw. When the invasion of the Nazis in Read More

Les Possédés

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Isabelle Huppert, Lambert Wilson, Jutta Lampe, Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Bernard Blier, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu

Synopsis: This political drama is taken from the classic story from Feodor Dostoyevsky, but liberties have been taken and many secondary characters eliminated. The author's condemnation of a godless society and his disdain of those who follow blindly to popular political causes remains intact. ~ Dan Read More

Everything for Sale

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Beata Tyszkiewicz, Andrzej Lapicki, Witold Holtz

Synopsis: Polish director Andrej Wajda's portrait of life on a movie set, which is disrupted (although not that much) when the leading man is killed in a leap from a moving train. It seems that the temperamental, unreliable star was always late anyway, so the shooting goes on without him, his character's Read More

Kronika Wypadkow Milosnych

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Paulina Mlynarska, Piotr Wawrzynczak, Bernadetta Machala, Dariusz Bobkowski, Jaroslaw Gruda

Synopsis: The futility of war was one of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's major themes, and he explored it from nearly every perspective imaginable, using storytelling styles which range from the strictly commercial to those focusing more on symbolic imagery. As this film opens it is 1939, and war seems to Read More

Eine Liebe in Deutschland

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Hanna Schygulla, Marie-Christine Barrault, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Elisabeth Trissenaar, Daniel Olbrychski

Synopsis: Based on a non-fiction bestseller of the same name by Rolf Hochhuth, Eine Liebe In Deutschland is about a tragic and forbidden love affair between Stanislaw, a Polish POW (Piotr Lysak) and Paulina (Hanna Schygulla) a fruit-and-vegetable vendor in a small town in Germany along the border with Read More

Wajda's Danton

Actors: Andrzej Wajda, Igor Luther, Gérard Depardieu, Angela Winkler, Wojciech Pszoniak

Synopsis: In this documentary on the filming of director Andrzej Wajda's movie Danton, Polish director Tomasz Pobog-Malinowski went to France and documented the filming of the confrontation between Robespierre and Danton in the French National Assembly and the guillotine scenes (both men were guillotined a Read More

Danton

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Gérard Depardieu, Wojciech Pszoniak, Patrice Chéreau, Angela Winkler, Boguslaw Linda

Synopsis: In 1982, legendary Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda fled his homeland and relocated in France to direct this powerful story about the ethical boundaries of power and leadership, which had many parallels to Poland's volatile political situation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Danton (Gérard Depardieu Read More

Man of Iron

Crew: Director

Actors: Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Krystyna Janda, Marian Opania, Irene Byrska, Boguslaw Linda

Synopsis: Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's sequel to his immensely well-received Man of Marble covers some of the same ground: the relationship of labor leaders to their communist political masters and the difficulties the media encounters in covering that story. But it adds an exceptionally timely element Read More

Bez Znieczulenia

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Ewa Dalkowska, Andrzej Seweryn, Krystyna Janda, Roman Wilhelmi

Synopsis: Jerzy Michalowski is a journalist who has been licensed by the Polish State to travel abroad. He researches stories and at the same time represents the country in journalistic circles. When, on a foreign broadcast, he displays a much too-thorough knowledge of the actual state of affairs inside Read More

The Young Girls of Wilko

Crew: Director

Actors: Daniel Olbrychski, Anna Seniuk, Christine Pascal, Maja Komorowska, Stanislawa Celinska

Synopsis: Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda directs the psychological drama Panny z Wilka (released in the U.S. as The Young Girls of Wilko), based on the book by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz. Set in the 1920s, WWI veteran Wiktor Ruben (Daniel Olbrychski) returns to the town where he had spent his childhood summers Read More

Dyrygent

Crew: Director

Actors: John Gielgud, Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Seweryn

Synopsis: Polish director Andrzej Wajda had a habit of switching gears between socially conscious films and pure box-office entertainments. The Conductor, released in Poland in 1979 as Dyrygent, falls into the latter category. John Gielgud stars as an old and venerated orchestra conductor, making his annual Read More

Zaproszenie Do Wnetrza

Crew: Director

Smuga Cienia

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1976 Polish Film Festival, this drama from director Andrzej Wajda was based on the short story The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad. The film tells the story of a young man who tries his best to helm a foundering boat bound for Singapore. Not only is the boat Read More

Man of Marble

Crew: Director

Actors: Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Krystyna Janda, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Jacek Lomnicki, Michal Tarkowski

Synopsis: The first of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's two "Solidarity" films, Man of Marble (originally Czlowiek z Marmuru) concerns bricklayer Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwilowicz). Lauded as a national hero in the 1950s due to his skills at his trade, Birkut has inexplicably fallen into obscurity. In Read More

The Promised Land

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Tadeusz Bialoszczynski, Anna Nehrebecka

Synopsis: Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda adapted his 1975 effort Land of Promise (Ziemia Obiecana) from an 1897 novel by Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont. The story concerns three Polish laborers of vastly different social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. Unlike many of their recalcitrant contemporaries, the Read More

Wesele

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Adapted from Stanislaw Wyspianski's turn-of-the-century play, The Wedding, or Wesele embodies a poetic exploration of Polish society in a crucial period during the mid-19th century when Poland had disappeared as a nation and was split three ways. Drenched in specifically Polish symbolism, it is Read More

Brzezina

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this Polish family drama, set in the pre-World War II era, a young man dying of tuberculosis returns to his older brother's farm in the countryside. His presence there heightens and then heals conflicts of long standing. The younger brother is too full of life to die before his time; he makes Read More

Pilatus und andere

Crew: Director

Trzecia Czesc Nocy

Crew: Supervisor/Manager

Actors: Leszek Teleszynski, Malgorzata Braunek, Anna Milewska, Jerzy Golinski, Jan Nowicki

Synopsis: This highly influential award-winning film, set during the time of the Nazi occupation of Poland, is rich with multilayered apocalyptic imagery and symbolism. Even though the film won an award for best debut in Poland, distribution was halted there by the authorities, and the director was viewed Read More

Landscape After Battle

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Daniel Olbrychski, Stanislawa Celinska, Tadeusz Janczar, Mieczyslaw Stoor, Zygmunt Malanowicz

Synopsis: Based on the writings of Tadeusz Borowski, a child survivor of Auschwitz who committed suicide at 29, this is the story of two concentration camp survivors. A sensitive young poet is approached by a pretty Jewish girl with a plan to move to the West. Fueled by hatred over his experience in prison Read More

Polowanie Na Muchy

Crew: Director

Actors: Malgorzata Braunek, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Daniel Olbrychski, Hanna Skarzanka, Jozef Pieracki

Synopsis: Nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, this comedy from Polish director Andrzej Wajda stars Zygmunt Malanowicz as Wlodek, a young man stuck in a dead-end job at the local library who lives with his harridan wife and critical in-laws in a small apartment. When Wlodek draws Read More

Przekladaniec

Crew: Director

Roly Poly

Crew: Director

Vrata Raja

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lionel Stander, John Fordyce, Mathieu Carrière, Pauline Challoner

Synopsis: Nominated for the Golden Bear at the 1968 Berlin Film Festival, this tragic historical film from director Andrzej Wajda is an adaptation of Jerzy Andrzejewski's novella Bramy Raju about the ill-fated Children's Crusade of the 13th century. Lionel Stander stars as a monk who leads a group of Read More

Popioly

Crew: Director

Actors: Daniel Olbrychski

Synopsis: Originally running 234 minutes long and filmed in black-and-white CinemaScope, Popioly is Andrzej Wajda's Western-style war epic. The screenplay is based on the novel Popioly by Stefan Zeromski and adapted by Aleksander Scibor-Rylski. Set in the early 19th century, the story concerns the Polish Read More

L'Amour à Vingt Ans

Crew: Director

Actors: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie-France Pisier, Rosy Varte, Cristina Gajoni, François Darbon, Eleonora Rossi-Drago

Synopsis: Several internationally known directors contributed to this generally adept and compelling series of five brief vignettes on love and its many ramifications. François Truffaut starts things off with a story of innocent love between a young man in his mid-teens and a slightly older woman. Renzo Rossellini Read More

Interview with Ballmeyer

Crew: Director

The Siberian Lady Macbeth

Crew: Director

Actors: Olivera Markovic, Ljuba Tadic

Synopsis: A few years after director Akira Kurosawa released the Japanese version (Throne of Blood) of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, Andrzej Wajda, for his first project outside of Poland, directed Siberska Ledi Magbet/Siberian Lady Macbeth. This particular version-of-two-versions was based on the 1865 novel Ledi Makbet Mtsenkogo Uyezda/Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District Read More

Samson

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Serge Merlin, Alina Janowska, Jan Ciecierski, Elzbieta Kepinska

Synopsis: Sampson is one of several Andrzej Wajda films harking back to his youth during the Nazi Occupation of Poland. Many of these concern not only the struggle between good and evil, but also between passive and impassive. The hero is a Jewish youth. He, like his family, has always been silent and Read More

Niewinni Czarodzieje

Crew: Director

Actors: Tadeusz Lomnicki

Synopsis: Award-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda guides this effective tale about a young doctor and the woman he finds when he did not know he was looking. The doctor is attractive enough to have women after him all of the time, which may seem like a great problem for most men but is unsettling to Read More

Lotna

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Two years after winning the Special Jury Prize for Kanal at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, renowned Polish director Andrzej Wajda directed this allegorical World War II drama. The film follows the winding paths of Lotna, a snow-white mare, as she wanders through Poland during it's fight against Read More

Ashes and Diamonds

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Zbigniew Cybulski, Eva Krzyewska, Adam Pawlikowski, Waclaw Zastrezynski, Bogumil Kobiela

Synopsis: This is the last film in the trilogy that began Andrzej Wajda's career as a director. Preceding this wartime drama are Pokolenie (1955) and Kanal (1957). Once again, Wajda presents a strong anti-war statement, this time in the personae of two men who are given orders on the last day of World War Read More

Kanal

Crew: Director

Actors: Wienczyslaw Glinski, Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar, Emil Karewicz, Wladyslaw Sheybal

Synopsis: The second of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's WWII trilogy, following Pokolenie (A Generation) and preceding Popiol I diament (Ashes and Diamonds), Kanal is the most physically harrowing of the set. Based on the experiences of Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, a Polish patriot who participated in the battle Read More

A Generation

Crew: Director

Actors: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzinska, Tadeusz Janczar

Synopsis: A Generation is the first of Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's "underground trilogy"-and also Wajda's first-ever feature film. Originally titled Pokolenie, the film dissects the impact that World War II had on the youth of Poland. Tadevsz Lomnicki plays an impressionable young Warsaw resident who Read More