"Andrzej Wajda: Three War Films"
1955-1958
Directed by Andrzej Wajda

Three groundbreaking films that ushered in the "Polish School" movement and solidified the importance of their creator, arguably the most important figure in post-World War II Eastern European cinema. Includes A Generation (1955, 87 minutes), Wajda's debut film about a wayward Polish teen drawn into the underground anti-Nazi resistance movement. The film is a stirring coming-of-age story with broad implications. Kanal (1957, 96 minutes), a Special Jury Prize winner at Cannes, is a harrowing look at the final days of the Warsaw uprising as experienced by a band of Polish resistance fighters attempting to escape the Nazi onslaught through the Warsaw sewers. The third film in the trilogy, Ashes and Diamonds (1958, 105 minutes), follows a pair of men who, in the waning hours of World War II, are given orders to murder an incoming commissar. Ashes and Diamonds balances the personal with the national and is considered one of the most important Polish films of all time. All three films are in Polish with English subtitles. Ashes and Diamonds is presented in letterboxed format. 288 minutes.