Pokolenie / A Generation

A seminal work in Polish New Wave cinema, director Andrzej Wajda fashions a devastating anti-war film about the lost generation of World War II. A Generation is set in Wola, a working-class section of Warsaw, in 1942 and tells the stories of two young men at odds with the German occupation of Poland. The young protagonist, Stach is living in squalor on the outskirts of the city and carrying out wayward acts of theft and rebellion. After a friend is killed attempting to heist coal from a German supply train, he finds work as an apprentice at a furniture workshop, where he becomes involved in an underground communist resistance cell. An outsider, Jasio Krone, the temperamental son of an elderly veteran, is initially reluctant to join the struggle but finally commits himself, running relief operations in the Jewish ghetto during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This is the first film in Andrzej Wajda’s World War II trilogy, followed by Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958).