Andrzej Wajda was filming the soul of Poland

The Polish director Andrzej Wajda has died at the age of 90 years. He was awarded the Palme d'Or in 1981 for "Iron Man," the story of the strike of the Gdansk shipyards that would change Poland.

Oscars, Golden Palm, Caesar, Golden Lion, Golden Bear .... The Polish director Andrzej Wajda had all the honors of world cinema for its rigorous and exciting films that explored the history of Poland height. 

Born March 6, 1926 in Suwalki (northeast), Andrzej Wajda wants to follow the example of his father, a military career, and tries unsuccessfully to enter in 1939 in a military school, on the eve of the Second world War.During the Nazi occupation, he started taking painting classes that extend after the war at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (south), before entering the famous film school in Lodz (center) .

His early films are imbued with the painful experience of the war, the Polish resistance against the Nazis. His first feature film "Generation" (1955), a story on the youth out of the suburbs of Warsaw during the occupation, gave birth to the famous "Polish Film School", where we undertook current debate on Polish heroism and romanticism.

In 1957, Andrzej Wajda gets the Cannes Special Jury Prize for his masterpiece on the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, "Kanal" (They loved life)."This was the beginning of everything," he admitted to AFP 50 years later."It allowed me to do what should be my next film, 'Ashes and Diamonds" (1958). He gave me a strong position in Polish cinema. "

The opening of "Ashes and Diamonds"

From the 70s, the work of Andrzej Wajda is inspired by the Polish literary heritage: "The birch wood" (1970), "The Wedding" (1972), "The Land of the great promise" (1974 ).

A fellow of Lech Walesa

In 1977, he presented at Cannes "The Man of Marble", critical of communist Poland, in which he gives a result three years later in "Man of Iron" .The film, telling virtually in real time the epic of Solidarity, the first free trade union in the communist world, was awarded the golden Palm at Cannes. 

"The day of the Palme has been very important in my life, of course. But I was aware that this award was not just for me. It was also a prize for the Solidarity trade union," he Explain. While his many friends were imprisoned during the coup of General Wojciech Jaruzelski against Solidarity in December 1981, the Palme d'Or save him from prison.Nevertheless, it is forced into exile, but continues to film history and great literature. "Danton" (1983), with Gérard Depardieu in one of his greatest roles, filming the excesses of the French Revolution, as a warning for future generations of Poles. 

After the fall of communism in 1989, Andrzej Wajda returns to history, with "Korczak" (1990), "the horsehair Ring" (1993) or "Holy Week" (1995).He always adapts to the cinema the great works of Polish literature as "Pan Tadeusz, when Napoleon crossed the Niemen" (1999) and "Revenge" (2002). In "Katyn," nominated for an Oscar in 2008, it tells the tragic story of his own father, Jakub Wajda, who was one of 22,500 Polish officers massacred by the Soviets in 1940, including at Katyn. Captain of an infantry regiment of the Polish army, he was executed by a shot in the neck by the NKVD, Stalin's secret police.

The trailer of "Katyn"

His latest film shortlisted for the Oscars

Wajda's film dedicated to the Solidarity trade union leader Lech Walesa , entitled "Man of the People", was released in theaters in 2013. It was presented at the Venice Film Festival selection out of competition.

Lovers of theater, Andrzej Wajda also staged forty pieces, many made abroad, especially in South America and Japan. Big fan of Japanese culture, the filmmaker was established in 1994 in Krakow a Japanese civilization center, Manggha. In 2002 he launched his own film school and scriptwriting.

His latest film, "Powidoki" (After-Image, 2016), which had its premiere in September at the Toronto Film Festival and which is not yet released in theaters, will be the Polish candidate for Oscar. Wajda tells the last years of the life of an avant-garde painter and art theorist Wladyslaw Strzeminski, fighting against the Stalinist power. Some critics saw it as a metaphor of the current Poland led by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS).