Katyn (2007)

Director:

Andrzej Wajda

Writers:

Andrzej Mularczyk (story)
Przemyslaw Nowakowski (writer)

Release Date:

21 September 2007 (Poland)

Genre:

Drama | History | War

Plot:

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

Plot Keywords:

Officer | Katyn Forest | Slaughter | 1940s | Cover Up

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 12 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Andrzej Chyra	...	Lt. Jerzy
Maja Ostaszewska	...	Anna
Artur Zmijewski	...	Andrzej
Danuta Stenka	...	Róza
Jan Englert	...	General
Magdalena Cielecka	...	Agnieszka
Agnieszka Glinska	...	Irena
Pawel Malaszynski	...	Lt. Piotr
Maja Komorowska	...	Andrzej's Mother
Wladyslaw Kowalski	...	Professor Jan
Antoni Pawlicki	...	Tadeusz
Agnieszka Kawiorska	...	Ewa
Sergey Garmash	...	Maj. Popov
Joachim Paul Assböck	...	Obersturmbannführer Brunon Müller (as Joachim Assböck)
Waldemar Barwinski	...	Polish Officer

Also Known As:

Post mortem. Opowiesc katynska (Poland) (working title)

Runtime:

Germany:118 min (Berlin International Film Festival) | Argentina:118 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival) | USA:121 min

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish | Russian | German

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX

Certification:

Sweden:15 | Australia:MA | Finland:K-15 | Ireland:15A | Argentina:16 | Japan:R15+

Filming Locations:

Kasina Wielka, Poland

Company:

Akson Studio

Trivia:

The director's father was killed in this massacre. Andrzej Wajda was only 13 years old then. His father's remains were never found.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Tur says to Ewa, "Haven't you seen that Disney's "The Sleeping Beauty", remember?" That movie was first released fourteen years after 1945.

Movie Connections:

References Vesyolye rebyata (1934)

Excellent, brutal, touching -- the tragedy of a generation.

Wajda, whose father was one of the tens of thousands of victims of this mega war crime, has created a powerful film that should be viewed both within Poland and abroad.

To understand modern Poland, it is necessary to understand what happened to much of the country's pre-WWII intellectual makeup. Wajda constructs a film that lets film audiences comprehend if not the scale of the crime, at least its devastating effects on victims and their families.

The film is well edited. It takes a complex story and tells it in the amount of time that audiences can both sit and take in the details as well as tolerate the brutality of the event itself.