Andrzej Wajda

In 1945, as Stalin sets his hands over Poland, famous painter Wladislaw Strzeminski refuses to compromise on his art with the doctrines of social realism. Persecuted, expelled from his chair at the University, he's eventually erased from the museums' walls. With the help of some of his students, he starts fighting against the Party and becomes the symbol of an artistic resistance against intellectual tyranny.

Andrzej Wajda mentions Andrzej Wróblewski (1927-1957) as a painter and friend. It tells about a man facing the challenges of the epoch and dramatically searching for his space. Wróblewski, seen through the eyes of Wajda, is a genius who had to wait a long time for recognition, but also did not fully recognize his own greatness. Their paths crossed right after the war, when they both studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Born in Vilnius, the young artist studied at the faculty of painting and sculpture, he also studied art history at the Jagiellonian University. The film was produced on the occasion of the exhibition of the same title organized at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Krakow in 2015.

How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people.

At the Old Theater in Krakow Wajda staged a play in 1971, based on Dostoevsky's novel "Demons". In this documentary Wajda tells the story of the unique play that went on uninterrupted for 10 years despite opposition from the authorities.

A theatrical performance of the Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre in Krakow recorded for TVP Kultura.

In this documentary, Andrzej Wajda presents a biography of the famous filmmaker and his long-time collaborator, Edward Klosinski. He was an outstanding cinematographer. Among others, his wife Krystyna Janda and closest friends, as well as the director himself, talk about his extraordinary work. The film also uses excerpts from many major productions that Klosinski took part in creating.

As an aging woman married to a workaholic doctor by chance meets a young man who makes her feel young again. All of this is films by a director making a film about her which cuts in and out of the on camera and off camera drama.

On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later.

A 2005 novella film created to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Solidarity movement. It consists of 13 10-minute shorts. There are various forms: mini-feature, music video, documentary, animation, interview.

Interview with political scientist and social activist Jan Nowak-Jezioranski by film director Andrzej Wajda.

A winter day at a Polish castle, half owned by a fatalistic notary and half by a volcanic old soldier's niece. The old soldier, Cupbearer, and the notary are sworn enemies, which may doom the love between the niece, Klara, and the notary's son, Waclaw. On this day, the tongue-tied Cupbearer asks a braggart courtier, Papkin, to sue on his behalf for the hand of the widow Hanna. Papkin succeeds and

Andrzej Wajda documentary about Polish film.

During the German occupation of a small Polish town, Franciszek Kłos, a lowly local policeman, will stop at nothing to become a Volksdeutsche. Eager to prove his loyalty, he zealously carries out the occupiers' orders. What begins as administrative compliance soon escalates when he commits his first murder of a fellow Pole. Condemned to death by the Polish underground, Kłos outwardly shrugs off the sentence while quietly drowning his growing fear in alcohol. As his inhibitions crumble, he descends deeper into violence—participating in the roundup and execution of hidden Jews, and earning a reputation for brutality even among the SS.

An attempt to summarize the director's life and work to date, starting from his early youth and ending with his work on "Pan Tadeusz".

The film tells about the period of Polish history in the 20s of the last century, when the fragile government of the country fell, and a man of the people came to the fore. In fact, he turned out to be a cunning populist and an immoral politician, ready for any tricks for the sake of his goals.

Romance brings two warring families together in this historical drama. As citizens fight for independence in 1810s Lithuania, Tadeusz, the son of a murderer, and Zosia, a young woman, come together for a wedding against a backdrop of changing politics, ancient traditions, and the uncertain future of a country.

A devout Catholic peasant girl is corrupted by two new friends when her family moves to the city. An allegory of traditional Polish values under threat from materialism and decadence in the post-Communist era.

During the Nazi era, a Jewish woman on the run takes a trolley which passes near the Warsaw ghetto, where the uprising battle is taking place, and some passengers are struck by stray bullets. They take temporary refuge in an empty building, and there she has a chance meeting with her ex-fiancé. He offers to put her up--that is, hide her--for a few days. He's now married, a professional who lives in an idyllic suburb reached by a trolley that runs through the woods. His wife seems more committed to putting up the fugitive than he is. The story involves the neighbors, the building owner who avoids involvement and seeks solace in classic poetry, and the super and his suspicious wife.

Andrzej Wajda's Japanese-language film based on the last chapter of Dostoevsky's Idiot, in which Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin return to the past in a conversation over the dead body of Nastassya Filippovna. Bando Tamasaburo, regarded as one of the most outstanding female impersonators in Japanese theater, plays the dual role of Myshkin and Nastassya.

A Polish Resistance fighter who survived the Nazi years cannot accept the new Communist power.

The stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" marked Polish film director Andrzej Wajda's return to the theater. Following the play's premiere in Poland, it was staged at Berlin's Schaubühne theater in 1988, and its success led to a film adaptation. The production closely follows the original text and, with a few exceptions, features the Schaubühne ensemble.

The story of Polish pedagogue Janusz Korczak and his dedication to protecting Jewish orphans during the war.

In 1988, Figaro magazine asked a few famous directors to direct a series of short movies to celebrate the 10 years of the revue. The movies have been released for the French revolution bicentenary. Includes: Werner Herzog's Les Gaulois, David Lynch's The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Andrzej Wajda's Proust contre la déchéance, Luigi Comencini's Pèlerinage à Agen, Jean-Luc Godard's Le dernier mot.

Russia, 1870. A group of young anarchist revolutionaries set out to overthrow the Czarist regime through violence. Their attacks create a climate of psychosis and mutual distrust among the population, but in reality, both revolutionaries and repressors are being manipulated by a diabolical individual.

The plot is unknown and not much is known about the film. It's part of the 'French as Seen by...' collection and it's held in the collection of Institut national de l audiovisuel

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

Set in the summer months preceding the September 1939 outbreak of World War II in Polish part of Lithuania. A young highschool lad, Witek, is hoping to pass the entrance exams to the university. His love interest is Alina, his high-school colleague.

In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the authorities came to learn of it, the lovers' arrest, and the aftermath. While his son takes Polaroid photographs, he retraces the steps of his childhood and interviews those who should remember. The story is disclosed in flashbacks that focus on the lovers (Paulina and Stanislaus), on a jealous and conniving neighbor, and on Mayer, the local SS commander who wants to find a way out of inevitable consequences.

Danton and Robespierre were close friends and fought together in the French Revolution, but by 1793 Robespierre was France's ruler, determined to wipe out opposition with a series of mass executions that became known as the Reign of Terror. Danton, well known as a spokesman of the people, had been living in relative solitude in the French countryside, but he returned to Paris to challenge Robespierre's violent rule and call for the people to demand their rights. Robespierre, however, could not accept such a challenge, even from a friend and colleague, and he blocked out a plan for the capture and execution of Danton and his allies.

In Warsaw in 1980, the Communist Party sends disgruntled radio reporter Winkel to Gdańsk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers - particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an independent labour union leader whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews the people surrounding Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka.

A violinist in a provincial Polish orchestra, whose husband is the director of the ensemble, on a visit to the US ties up with the world- renowned symphony conductor. As it turns out he was once in love with violinist's mother. The conductor, a slightly unstable hypochondriac, returns to Poland to lead the provincial orchestra. He also tries to revive old love affair using the violinist as a surrogate of her mother. Her husband is resentful of the conductor for both personal and professional reasons.

Set in the late '20s. A thirtyish young man, who heads a small factory, faints at the funeral of a close friend. He decides to go home to his aunt and uncle for a while, but gets involved with a family of five women who had been in love with him at one time though he had apparently loved only one, who, unknown to him, has died since his departure. The women are mainly disillusioned with life or estranged from husbands while the youngest has a crush on him.

A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being "unwanted" parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce. She offers no explanations as he tries to untie these problems himself. All the moves he makes are the wrong ones. He takes on drinking heavily with students eager to attend his seminar after discovering the class has been canceled. The journalist, once suave and commanding, is reduced to silence.

Television play adaptation of Wajda's stage play of Stanisław Wyspiański's November Night. The drama takes place on two levels - historical and metaphorical. The first one is almost a chronicle of several hours of the uprising - it shows the drama of the attitudes of Poles at the beginning of the armed struggle, in confrontation with the attitude of Grand Duke Constantine, the Tsar's deputy in Poland. The second one presents the world of gods playing out their arguments. Man becomes a plaything in their hands, but it is he who experiences his fear, heroism and hope.

A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared.

The Dead Class (1975), by Tadeusz Kantor and the Cricot 2 company, is considered one of the most innovative and influential works of twentieth-century theatre. The breakthrough first version of the production - performed to great critical acclaim, but only rarely seen live by audiences outside Poland - was documented on film in 1976 by the Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda.

Andrzej Wajda's English-language film of a novella by Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, aka Joseph Conrad, about a young man in his first command as a sea captain. A series of crises prove incredibly difficult for his new authority, for the sea is curiously becalmed and the crew is weakened by feverish malaria. When the first mate's fear convinces many that the ship is haunted and cursed by the malevolent spirit of the previous captain, the young man must cope with their superstition as well as the conspicuous absence of much-needed medicine.

At the turn of the century, Lodz, Poland, was a quick-paced manufacturing center for textiles, replete with cutthroat industrialists and unsafe working conditions. Three young friends, a Pole, a Jew, and a German, pool their money together to build a factory.

Set at the turn of the century, the story concerns a Polish poet living in Cracow who has decided to marry a peasant girl. The wedding is attended by a heterogenous group of people from all strata of Polish society, who dance, get drunk and lament Poland's 100-year-long division under Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The bridegroom, a painter friend, and a journalist each in turn is confronted with spectres of Polish past.

The trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri is led by prosecutor Pontius Pilate who believes in the innocence of the accused but is forced to sentence him to death. This biblical story is set in present-day Germany.

A man suffering from tuberculosis returns from abroad to stay at his brother's farm, hoping to make amends, while also beginning a love affair with a farm girl.

Film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury their tormentors they find alive. Then they are herded into other camps as the Allies try to devise policy to control the situation. A young poet who cannot quite find himself in this new situation, meets a headstrong Jewish young girl who wants him to run off with her, to the West. He cannot cope with her growing demands for affection, while still harboring the hatred for the Germans and disdain for his fellow men who quickly revert to petty enmities.

Filmed in 1970, this little-known short by Andrzej Wajda remained unseen for over five decades after being archived under the working title The Artist. Shot at swimming pools in Warsaw, it follows an athlete who savors the freedom of a solitary dive before joining a disciplined group of competitive swimmers. Originally made using leftover color film stock from Brzezina (1970), the film was digitally restored by TVP in 2026.

Włodek is a middle-aged 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 Włodek draws the interest of a library patron, the beautiful young woman encourages him to strive for better things in his life and professional career. Together, the two take off for a three-day affair, but surprises could await Włodek upon his return home.

A staging of William Shakespeare's tragedy, directed in 1969 by Andrzej Wajda. The roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are played by Tadeusz Łomnicki and Magda Zawadzka - actors who at that time gained popularity in the series "Pan Wołodyjowski". This perverse use of the artists' images by the director was intended to serve an interpretation of the tragedy that emphasizes Shakespeare's question: where does evil in man come from?

Wajda's homage to Zbigniew Cybulski, the "Polish James Dean" who starred in the director's ASHES AND DIAMONDS and died young. The movie follows the tribulations of a director attempting to make a movie with a Cybulski-like star who never shows up.

In 1212, a Children's Crusade is launched after a young shepherd, Jacques de Cloyes, claims to have had a vision in which it is said that the innocence of children would be able to liberate Jerusalem. A monk, returning from Holy Land, joins the crusade and hears the children's confessions, gradually realizing that most of them are taking part not for religious, but for more worldly reasons, like rejected love and hopes for freedom, the true nature of their enthusiasm is homosexual. In fact, if the children follow Jacques, it is more for romantic than religious reasons. They take literally the famous phrase: “Love one another”.

The main character, race car driver Ryszard Fox, is involved in many car accidents. After each car crash he gets a transplant for one or another internal organ. After a while there is a question: Who really is Ryszard Fox?

Set in the time of Napoleon wars, shows how the wars swept over the unfortunate Polish country at the beginning of the XIX-th century. Story revolves around the Polish legion under command of General Dabrowski, who then fought on Napoleon's side with the hopes of Poland's revival.

A ruthless woman's adulterous affair with a drifter sets in motion a chain-reaction of murder and deception in a remote village in 19th Century Mtsensk.

Love at Twenty unites five directors from five different countries to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of 20. The episodes are united with the score of Georges Delerue and still photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Andrzej Wajda’s first TV Theatre production is an adaptation of Kazimierz Brandys’s book of the same title. An American journalist interviews released SS General Wolfgang Joachim Ballmeyer about the massacre on Barnum Island, where locals were manipulated through religious conflicts into aiding their own annihilation. Unexpected justice finally catches up with the criminal.

A young Jewish man from Warsaw is imprisoned after an antisemitic incident at his university. He is released when the Second World War breaks out and manages to escape from the ghetto. However, he chooses to leave his hiding place and fight, determined to share the fate of those threatened by the Holocaust. The protagonist is compared to the biblical Samson, who sacrificed his own life.

A young doctor is tired of being sought by women. One night he meets a young girl who all but forces herself into his room where they talk of morals and love.

Set in the beginning of World War II, when the Polish cavalry still fought with lances against German troops, the movie is about a white thoroughbred horse that passed through various hands in a military outfit.

A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.

In the last few days of the Warsaw Uprising during World War II, a modest group of Resistance members remains. The band must take refuge in the sewers under the orders of leader Zadra, but it's only a matter of time before they will have to emerge. However, when they try, they are met only with intense hostility from the Nazis. Despite their attempts stay resolute through immense mental strain, it becomes increasingly apparent that they may be doomed.

Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance—and to the beautiful Dorota. Soon he is engaged in dangerous efforts to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for others’ lives.

A documentary about the sculptor Xawery Dunikowski, shot in his workshop. Director paid a tribute to the artist - a recluse without the artistic inheritors.

Framed as a mother’s bedtime narration to her child, this short documentary observes a city at night, revealing the factories, tram depots, and essential services that operate while most people sleep. Directed by Andrzej Wajda, the film turns nocturnal labor into a quiet civic portrait, emphasizing the unseen workers whose efforts sustain daytime life.

Andrzej Wajda's first movie looks at the pottery in the town of Iłża, Poland. Much of it shows the actual process of creating all the objects out of clay.

First short film by Wajda, based on the story "A Naughty Boy" by A. Chekhov.