Katyn

Aroview: Andrzej Wajda cements himself as Poland’s greatest director with this late-career triumph, a war story addressing the eradication of some 15,000 Polish military officers at the hands of Stalin.

‘The Katyn Massacre’ provoked further outrage with its subsequent cover-up, and Wajda’s storytelling carries the weight of this atrocity with a heavy heart. The filmmaking, understandably, is burdened with the responsibility, never entirely assured in its twin-delivery of personal and national histories (the director’s father was a victim of the tragedy), yet exhumes such harrowing details from the past, that it remains a wholly affecting and vital film experience.