Celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Andrzej Wajda!
Ready to check off another classic from your Letterboxd watchlist? To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Andrzej Wajda, the artist whose vision shaped generations of Polish cinema, we screen Ashes and Diamonds in collaboration with The Forum on Central and Eastern Europe and the Polish Institute - Brussels. The screening will be subtitled in English, and will be followed by an after-talk.
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Ashes and Diamonds
Set on VE Day, 8 May 1945, Ashes and Diamonds takes place in a provincial Polish town where the end of the war brings not relief but a profound crisis of identity. Adapted from Jerzy Andrzejewski’s novel, the film follows Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), a resistance fighter confronting a final assassination mission just as he glimpses the first fragile possibility of life beyond conflict. Poland’s fighters—caught between their wartime loyalties and the uneasy dawn of communist rule—struggle to understand what their sacrifices mean in a landscape where the victors are also former invaders. The film’s title, taken from lines by poet Cyprian Norwid, poses a haunting question: can any “diamond” of hope survive the ashes left by war?