Powidoki (AFTERIMAGE)

The rise of Socialist Realism spares neither aesthetic dogmas nor individual lives. Wajda transforms the story of the painter Władysław Strzemiński, who, at the end of his life in the early 1950s, rejected Stalinist doctrine, into a tribute in his swan song – and into a solemn personal declaration of the autonomy of art and its fragility under political pressure.
(Florian Widegger)