Katyn

An examination of the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the Katyn forest in 1940.

Director:

Andrzej Wajda

Writers:

Andrzej Mularczyk (story), Przemyslaw Nowakowski (screenplay) 

Stars:

Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski

Storyline

When the Soviet Union on 17 September 1939 invades Poland, Anna Aleksandrowna leaves her home in Krakow to search for her husband, the Polish captain Andrzej. She finds him together with other officers captured by the Red Army, but some minutes later he is pushed into a train, which will take all the Polish officers to a prison camp in Kozelsk in Russia. Anna and her daughter Nika is now stuck in the Soviet occupied zone, unable to go back to Krakow in the German zone, not until a brave Russian captain helps them to flee. 3 April 1940 Andrzej is transported from the prison camp in Kozelsk to the Katyn Forest, where thousands of Polish officers are killed. In 1943 the Germans capture this area and find the mass graves. 13 April 1943 they start announcing the names of the identified corpses through loudspeakers in Krakow. Anna is happy that Andrzej is not in any of the Katyn lists, which gives her some hope. 18 January 1945 the Red Army liberates Krakow from the Nazis. The Russians ...

Version 1

User Reviews

Beautiful and honest.

27 January 2008 | by Alexander Michalik (alex.michalik@gmail.com) (Opole, Poland) – See all my reviews

I've seen this movie about two month ago. The information that it's one of the nominees for Oscars '08 was a huge gladness for me but not a surprise, just like for millions of people in Poland. I knew from the first place that somebody out there in Hollywood will notice the beauty of clearness and disarming honesty of Katyń. That's not the movie that you go to just in order to kill some time and relax. You have to be aware of the historical facts if you want to understand Katyń in the best way. Wajda did a great job, along with really good actors that really felt their roles. World needed the movie that tells the whole story about what happened in Katyn in 1940. Finally, it got it.