POPIÓL I DIAMENT
Andrzej Wajda’s 1958 masterpiece. As World War II and the German occupation ends, the Polish resistance and the Soviet forces turn on each other in an attempt to take over leadership in Communist Poland.
It's VE Day, 8 May 1945 in a provincial Polish town, and Nazi Germany has just surrendered. The war is over, but not in Poland. As the German soldiers vacate, the remaining Russian forces and Polish resistance fighters must work out the hierarchies of power in "liberated" Communist Poland. A Polish assassin (Zbigniew Cybulski) is given orders to kill a Russian soldier (Waclaw Zastrzezynsky) whom he, days before, was fighting alongside, and this moral conflict makes him question the goals for which he has been fighting. Far from being a cause for celebration, the so-called end of the war marks a crisis of identity for their country. This is a stylish thriller flavoured with post-war political subtext, incendiary intellectual cinema that employs some striking imagery while relating its richly textured tale of a nation in turmoil. (Subtitles)
Poland 1958 Andrzej Wajda 103m
