The Films of Andrzej Wajda

Marking the 100th anniversary of his birth and the 10th anniversary of his death, Poland declared 2026 the year of Andrzej Wajda. One of the great European directors of the 20th century, whose work and political engagement played a decisive role in bringing Polish film to international audiences, Wajda’s films have long been unavailable and difficult to view in the United States. As part of the ‘Wajda 100 Tour – North America’ project, organized by DI Factory with the financial support of the Polish Film Institute, SIFF is proud to present eight films from the filmmakers diverse oeuvre. 

Born in 1926 into a home that honored fine art (with a literary schoolteacher mother and his aide-de-camp father an amateur painter), Andrzej Wajda studied sculpture and oil painting before enlisting in the anti-fascist, and anti-communist, Home Army at the age of sixteen. Following the devastation of WWII, Wajda emerged from the rubble as a commanding force in film, launching a career that continually envisioned, and reenvisioned, a Polish national cinema and identity. An educator, aesthete, dissident, community builder, and cinematic experimenter, Wajda remains an influential and monumental figure in world cinema. 

Over four weekends, experience a sampling of work from Andrzej Wajda’s first three productive decades. The series commences with the first two films from his acclaimed War Trilogy (A Generation and Kanal), evocative portraits of left-wing resistance in Nazi occupied Poland. The subsequent weekend spotlights the iconically charismatic Zbigniew Cybulski, the “Polish James Dean” at the center of Wajda’s milestone film Ashes and Diamonds and who, following his untimely death, received a meta-textual cinematic treatment in Everything for Sale. The early ‘70s found Wajda experimenting stylistically with visually resplendent literary adaptations in the dizzying The Wedding and the intimate contemplation of nature in The Birch Wood, broadening his mythic scope. We conclude with two of his most respected political epics, The Promised Land and Man of Marble, works that look back at tumultuous labor history while interrogating the present.

Special thanks to the WFDiF, FINA, the Polish Cultural Institute, and Jessica Rosner in making this series possible.