A Generation

Wajda’s first feature launched one of the most durable careers in world cinema. Barely out of film school, he demonstrated a remarkable mastery of the medium; vividly captured the 1942 Warsaw milieu in which he’d fought as a teenager against the Nazis; introduced the legendary Zbigniew Cybulski and another young film student, Roman Polanski; made a startling break with the traditional theatricality of Polish screen acting; and created what would become the first part of his classic war trilogy (followed by Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds). Inevitably colored by the obligatory exaggeration of a Communist resistance, the film contrasts official reports of wartime heroics with cruel reality.

In addition to singular tickets we also offer a six-ticket pass for the retrospective.