Synopsis
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.
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Cast
- Andrzej ChyraJerzy
- Maja OstaszewskaAnna
- Artur ŻmijewskiAndrzej
- Danuta StenkaGeneral's Wife
- Jan EnglertGeneral
- Magdalena CieleckaAgnieszka
- Agnieszka GlińskaSchool Director
- Paweł MałaszyńskiPilot Lieutenant
- Maja KomorowskaProfessor's Wife
- Władysław KowalskiProfessor U. J.
Recommendations
- 91
Entertainment Weekly
The great Polish director Andrzej Wajda musters the power of classical filmmaking and personal emotional investment to dramatize a stunning atrocity long covered up. - 90
Variety
This plays almost like an academic master class, meticulously exploring the event's ramifications but only catching full fire at the end. - 83
The A.V. Club
Wajda makes the murders look horrific and jangled, like something out of "Hostel," then ends Katyn with extended darkness and silence, allowing the audience to mourn for the death of a nation. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
The period sets, costumes and cinematography all superbly recreate the brutal era, grand illusions and everyday suffering of the Poles under both the Nazis and the Soviets. - 80
New York Magazine (Vulture)
It is filmed with simplicity, a purity of intent, and I wanted to watch the faces of these men in their last seconds of life--not for the sake of history, but because of Wajda's imperative to put his father's death onscreen. He needed to do this. And somehow, sanity is restored. - 80
The New York Times
The result is a film with a stately, deliberate quality that insulates it against sentimentality and makes it all the more devastating. - 75
New York Post
Wajda, who lost his father in the purge, gives the film an awful silence and mystery at its core. - 70
Chicago Reader
Andrzej Wajda has spent much of his long career dramatizing major events in Polish history, and this poignant feature depicts the circumstances surrounding the Soviet Union's massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the spring of 1940.
