21/01/2009

Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrzej Wajda
interview: Michal Kwiecinski
film profile] – nominated last year for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar – will be released in theatres between January and April in Italy, Denmark, Norway, Ukraine and France. The title will then be launched in Germany, Japan, the US, the UK, Slovenia and Australia.

Sold internationally by TVP S.A. (Polish public television), the film has so far been bought for 60 territories (including over 30 in Europe). This is probably the best result for foreign distribution in the history of Polish cinema.

Last year, Katyn hit screens in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Taiwan, Iran and Brazil. Released on January 9 in Sweden, the film will be launched on January 29 in Athens and Rome before hitting Ukrainian theatres in March and French theatres on April 1 (distributed by KinoVista).

The film premiered in Poland on September 17, 2007 (when it was released on 189 screens). This symbolic date marked the anniversary of the Red Army’s entry into East Poland in 1939.

However, Wajda has publicly stated on several occasions that Katyn – which looks back at the massacre of 22,500 Polish soldiers by the Soviets in 1940 – is above all "an elegy, a film about mourning and individual suffering". "I don’t want it to be hijacked or associated with any political manipulation", the director commented after the film’s out-of-competition screening at the 58th Berlinale.

Wajda’s works are set to enjoy international exposure as his latest film Tatarak (see news) – adapted from a short story by writer and poet Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz – has just been selected in official competition at the forthcoming Berlinale (February 5-15, 2009).

(Translated from French)