Andrzej Witold Wajda (6 March 1926 – 9 October 2016) was a Polish film director.
He was born in Suwalki. In 1940 his father, a Polish army officer, was murdered by the Soviets during the Katyn Massacre. In 1942 a teenaged Wajda joined the Polish Home Army, which was La Résistance against the Nazi occupation. These events would be the basis of some of his most famous films: Wajda's Katyn is about the massacre while his trilogy A Generation, Kanal, and Ashes and Diamonds all focus on the Home Army's resistance against the Nazis and the Soviets.
1955 film A Generation, about teenagers getting involved with the Home Army in 1942 Warsaw, made him famous. (A young Roman Polański plays one of the friends who joins the resistance.). He spent the 1960s alternating between highbrow films and more popular fare while also directing stage plays for the Polish theater. The 1970s saw Wajda win worldwide acclaim, while also making films that were sympathetic to the Polish labor movement. 1981's Man of Iron, about Solidarity, won him the Palme d'Or. He traveled to France to make Danton, a film about the French Revolution.
He kept making films for the rest of his life, continuing past an honorary Oscar in 2000, receiving his fourth and last Best Foreign Language Film award for Katyn in 2007. His last film was Afterimage, completed shortly before his 2016 death from pulmonary failure.
Andrzej Wajda on TV Tropes:
- A Generation (1955)
- Kanał (1957)
- Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
- The Promised Land (1974)
- The Maids of Wilko (1979)
- Man of Iron (1981)
- Katyń (2007)
