Katyn (2007)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Andrzej Wajda

Writers:

Andrzej Mularczyk (story)
Przemyslaw Nowakowski (writer)

Release Date:

21 September 2007 (Poland)

Genre:

Drama | History | War

Plot:

An examination of the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the Katyn forest in 1940.

Plot Keywords:

Officer | Katyn Forest | Slaughter | 1940s | Cover Up

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 12 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Andrzej Chyra	...	Lt. Jerzy
Maja Ostaszewska	...	Anna
Artur Zmijewski	...	Andrzej
Danuta Stenka	...	Róza
Jan Englert	...	General
Magdalena Cielecka	...	Agnieszka
Agnieszka Glinska	...	Irena
Pawel Malaszynski	...	Lt. Piotr
Maja Komorowska	...	Andrzej's Mother
Wladyslaw Kowalski	...	Professor Jan
Antoni Pawlicki	...	Tadeusz
Agnieszka Kawiorska	...	Ewa
Sergey Garmash	...	Maj. Popov
Joachim Paul Assböck	...	Obersturmbannführer Brunon Müller (as Joachim Assböck)
Waldemar Barwinski	...	Polish Officer

Also Known As:

Post mortem. Opowiesc katynska (Poland) (working title)

Runtime:

Germany:118 min (Berlin International Film Festival) | Argentina:118 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival) | USA:121 min

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish | Russian | German

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX

Certification:

Sweden:15 | Australia:MA | Finland:K-15 | Ireland:15A | Argentina:16 | Japan:R15+

Filming Locations:

Kasina Wielka, Poland

Company:

Akson Studio

Trivia:

Poland's Official Submission to the Best Foreign Language Film Category of the 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008).

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Tur says to Ewa, "Haven't you seen that Disney's "The Sleeping Beauty", remember?" That movie was first released fourteen years after 1945.

Movie Connections:

References Vesyolye rebyata (1934)

"The Soviet Red Army is your ONLY friend"

KATYN is one of the most powerful World War II films I have ever seen and from the first frame of Poles fleeing from the Germans to the rear and the Russians in the front, an audience immediately feels the horror and claustrophobia of attempting to flee from the enemy, but with a sense of absolutely no where to run. The cast is simply superb, the story one of Polish Officers who meet their fate at the hands of the enemy, but with a sense of pride in themselves and their families, and the men and women who struggled to deal with both the Germans and the Russians and survive, is one written in the annals of history, but now with the truth of the slaughter finally brought to light. The final scenes in KATYN sent me from the theater with a sense of wanting to get a deep breath of air in my lungs, and to attempt to digest the horror I had just seen on the screen. KATYN deserves the Oscar and it is a film that will haunt you forever.