Katyn

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Katyn

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Katyn

Artur Zmijewski, Maja Ostaszewska, Andrzej Chyra, Danuta Stenka, Jan Englert

This film tells of the Polish officers who were murdered near Katyn by the Soviet secret service NKWD in the spring of 1940. It is also the story of their relatives, many of whom waited for years for ...( read more  read more... )the return of their husbands, fathers, sons or brothers. After the invasion of the German Armed Forces on September 1, 1939, and the occupation of east Poland a few weeks later by the Red Army as a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact, all officers of the Polish Army--including reservists, police officers and intellectuals--were taken into Soviet custody.

Id: 10770781

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Katyn Recent Reviews
  • gor41
    October 24, 2009
    gor41
    Worthy if plodding account of WWII atrocity which generates an unsettling sense of foreboding as the 'climax' approaches.
  • merlynsprankling
    June 26, 2009
    merlynsprankling
    Katyn takes us back to the late 1930's as Word War 2 was unfolding, geographical borders were being pulverised and enemies were approaching from all sides.

    There has been a wealth of films about this period of time, thanks to a wide range of Jewish film makers ensuring that th...( read more)e world never forgets, like the revered Polish director Andrzei Wajda, who is now in his 80's, but still making top quality films like this one. Perhaps because he lived it and survived.

    It was September of 1939 when Poland faced it worst--from the west the German Nazis had invaded and were setting up concentration camps in Cracow. From the east, Stalin's Soviet Red Army were heading in. The Poles were caught flatfooted about where to run and who to trust.

    Wajda tells the story of this time, through the eyes of women who are left behind as their husbands are held in POW camps. One of these women is Anna (Ostaszewska). She flees alone with her daughter Nika, after her attempt to convince her husband, Polish Captain Andrzej (Zmijewski), to escape with them fails because of his conviction of not leaving his men. The film unfolds through to 1943, when a list of names of 12,000 soldiers found slaughtered in the Katyn forest. And the list turns out to be far from accurate.

    Katyn is structured to leave us as much in the dark about the fate of the missing men and women. It reminds us again how much WW2 material has remained hidden during the communist years, with the Soviets accepting blame for the massacre only in the 1990's.
  • lizzardb72688
    September 24, 2009
    lizzardb72688
    The story of the Polish Officers murdered during WWII by Soviet secret service, the film is quite slow moving in that it takes place over a span of around 5 years yet seems to focus on a lot of not so important events. The true point of the film isn't entirely revealed until the...( read more) last 5 minutes of the movie when the massacre is revealed in a sort of flash back moment. I haven't seen a lot of Polish films, but I suppose it could just be part of the culture to be a little long and a little boring.
  • smootysveen
    April 27, 2008
    smootysveen
    A horrifying event, somewhat confusingly told, but beautifully photographed.
  • valadezraymond
    October 17, 2009
    valadezraymond
    this is a very good film about real event that took place during WW2. you get a inside look of how each states would use propaganda and censorship to advance their agendas. a bit slow at time but over all worth seen it.
  • bradt66
    September 7, 2009
    bradt66
    An absolutely brilliant film and a staunch history lesson of the Russia-Germany cooperation early in the war.
  • Phonex
    September 3, 2009
    Phonex
    Katyn is a special film in my long career as a director. I never thought I would live to see the fall of the USSR, or that free Poland would provide me with the opportunity to portray on the screen the crime and lies of Katyn.

    While Stalin's crime deprived my father of life, ...( read more)my mother was touched by the lies and the hoping in vain for the return of her husband.

    The creation of the screenplay about Katyn took several years. The long, arduous process of looking through huge quantities of individual recollections, diaries, and other mementos confirmed my determination to base this first film about Katyn on the facts these materials related. And this is how the film's opening scene on the bridge, as well as the one featuring Soviet soldiers defacing the Polish flag, came to be. Most of the incidents depicted on the screen actually happened and were reported by eye-witnesses. While it is true that the details of the Katyn crime are now known, I couldn't omit, in this first film about the event, the image of death; death that met twenty thousand Polish officers. They were murdered, one at a time, a fact that was recorded in their personal files. This is evidence that the Soviet Union failed to recognize or respect any international standards, not even with regard to prisoners of war.

    All the men who died did so as members of the Polish intelligentsia, and this paved the way for Stalin's subjugation of Poland.
    A parallel theme to the Katyn crime is the Katyn lie and the official Soviet line that the Germans had committed the deed in 1941 after invading Soviet territory during the war.

    This lie had its greatest impact on the wives, mothers, and daughters of the murdered officers. For it was these women, in their struggle to discover the truth, who experienced the greatest repression from the new government following 1945.

    This is why, for years, Katyn has been an open, festering wound in the history of Poland that begged for a Polish film to address this topic. The first film.

    Andrzej Wajda-2007
  • jam233
    August 9, 2009
    jam233
    Excellent story, exceptional cinematography and a keen eye for period detail make this a remarkable film.The story is very moving, disturbing as well. The cast is terrific and Andrzej Wajda's direction is superb. Fine art direction and costumes.
  • FlyingSolo2009
    June 22, 2009
    FlyingSolo2009
    I don't really see a reason to watch this one. War movies aren't the happiest.
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