Popiół i diament / Ashes and Diamonds

Widely considered to be the best Polish film of all time and a landmark in world cinema, director Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds explores the fractured national identity of war-torn Poland. The action of Ashes and Diamonds takes place in 1945, shortly after World War II. The main protagonist of the film, former Home Army soldier Maciek Chełmicki, is acting in the anti-Communist underground. Maciek receives an order to kill Szczuka, the local secretary of the Polish Workers' Party. Only days before, they were fighting alongside, and this moral conflict makes Chełmicki question the goals for which he has been fighting. Chełmicki's internal battle symbolizes the larger Polish struggle to find autonomy after German occupation in World War II and in the midst of Soviet influence in the Cold War. Ashes and Diamonds completes Wajda's war films trilogy, following A Generation (1954) and Kanal (1956).