Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema, is headed for Hollywood this week. The director, who will be 82 next month, has been nominated in the category of Best Foreign Language Film for this Sunday's Oscars.
Wajda's film, Katyn, explores a subject that was off limits during the Communist era. In April 1940, Soviet Secret Police murdered over 4000 Poles in the forests of Katyn, Russia. The victims were Polish officers and members of the intelligentsia. Over 22, 000 Poles were slain in such circumstances, among them Wajda's own father, Captain Jakub Wajda.
Russia finally admitted responsibility for the crime in 1990, having previously blamed the Germans. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, discussing Katyn publicly had been an impossibility.
This is the fourth time that Mr Wajda has been nominated in the Best Foreign Film category, and he has not yet won. However, in 2000 he received an honorary oscar for his lifetime achievement.
The film has been seen by over 3 million people in Poland, and a screening at last week's Berlin Film Festival drew a standing ovation. Der Spiegel rated the film's finale as "among the most impressive of any film based on World War II".
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