Katyn (2007)

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

Director:

Andrzej Wajda

Writers:

Andrzej Mularczyk (story), Przemyslaw Nowakowski (screenplay)

Stars:

Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 14 wins & 12 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
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

Storyline

When the Soviet Union on 17 September 1939 invades Poland, Anna Aleksandrowna leaves her home in Krakow to search for her husband, the Polish captain Andrzej. She finds him together with other officers captured by the Red Army, but some minutes later he is pushed into a train, which will take all the Polish officers to a prison camp in Kozelsk in Russia. Anna and her daughter Nika is now stuck in the Soviet occupied zone, unable to go back to Krakow in the German zone, not until a brave Russian captain helps them to flee. 3 April 1940 Andrzej is transported from the prison camp in Kozelsk to the Katyn Forest, where thousands of Polish officers are killed. In 1943 the Germans capture this area and find the mass graves. 13 April 1943 they start announcing the names of the identified corpses through loudspeakers in Krakow. Anna is happy that Andrzej is not in any of the Katyn lists, which gives her some hope. 18 January 1945 the Red Army liberates Krakow from the Nazis. The Russians ...

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Plot Keywords:

1940s | red army | officer | forest | slaughter | 

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Taglines:

The untold story of the crime Stalin could not hide.

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Genres:

Drama | History | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish Russian German Ukrainian

Release Date:

21 September 2007 (Poland)

Also Known As:

Das Massaker von Katyn

Filming Locations:

11 Listopada, Praga Pólnoc, Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland

Box Office

Budget:

PLN 15,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$11,053, 22 February 2009, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$118,095, 19 April 2015

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$14,723,313, 19 April 2015

Company Credits

Production Co:

Akson Studio, TVP, Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min 118 min 118 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

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.

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Goofs

Tur says to Ewa, "Haven't you seen that Disney's "The Sleeping Beauty", remember?" That movie was first released fourteen years after 1945, so this may be a mistranslation in the subtitles for "Snow White".

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Connections

Featured in The 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008)

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Soundtracks

Concerto For Violin And Orchestra No. 2, Metamorphosen
Written by Krzysztof Penderecki
Performed by Polish State Philharmonic Orchestra

User Reviews

"The Soviet Red Army is your ONLY friend"

KATYN is one of the most powerful World War II films I have ever seen and from the first frame of Poles fleeing from the Germans to the rear and the Russians in the front, an audience immediately feels the horror and claustrophobia of attempting to flee from the enemy, but with a sense of absolutely no where to run. The cast is simply superb, the story one of Polish Officers who meet their fate at the hands of the enemy, but with a sense of pride in themselves and their families, and the men and women who struggled to deal with both the Germans and the Russians and survive, is one written in the annals of history, but now with the truth of the slaughter finally brought to light. The final scenes in KATYN sent me from the theater with a sense of wanting to get a deep breath of air in my lungs, and to attempt to digest the horror I had just seen on the screen. KATYN deserves the Oscar and it is a film that will haunt you forever.