Drama · History
Polish (Człowiek z żelaza)
1981 · Directed by Andrzej Wajda · 147 min
Poland, summer 1980. A worn-out radio journalist is sent to Gdańsk by the authorities to find damaging material on a strike leader at the shipyard. As he interviews the people around the man, a portrait of a family, a city and a decade starts to form.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining film of Polish political cinema and the late phase of the cinema of moral anxiety. It is a direct, immediate response to the rise of the Solidarity movement, and the second part of a diptych begun with Man of Marble.
Watch with intention
Watch it as an investigation in which every interviewee tells a different version of the past, and ask what each person wants the reporter to believe.
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