Film Archive

Wałęsa. Man of Hope – Director's Cut

Special Events 2014 / Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei – Director's Cut / Poland 2014

An Italian journalist arrives in cheerless 1980s Poland in order to interview Lech Walesa, the leading personality of the movement against the communist regime. She then files a report about the life of the electrician who worked his way up to become a towering figure in the fight to bring down the Iron Curtain. Andrzej Wajda’s director’s cut includes ten added scenes that were, according to his own words, "too good to forget about.”

Synopsis

Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci arrives in cheerless 1980s Poland to interview Lech Wałęsa, the leading figure of the movement against the communist regime. She then files a report about the life of the electrician who worked his way up to become a towering figure in the fight to bring down the Iron Curtain. The answers to her often unpleasantly direct questions form the chapters of a narrative in which we witness the birth of the Solidarity movement, Wałęsa’s fight against the political establishment, and the triumph of the movement in parliamentary elections. Through Andrzej Wajda’s eyes, the history-sanctified icon becomes human – vain and stubborn yet charismatic – a man who goes after his goals even at the expense of those closest to him. The director’s cut was created exclusively for the Karlovy Vary IFF with support from Unipetrol, an ORLEN Group company, which is also a partner of this year’s edition of the event. Andrzej Wajda’s director’s cut includes ten added scenes that were, in his words, "too good to forget about.”

About the film

133 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Andrzej Wajda / Screenplay Janusz Głowacki / Dir. of Photography Paweł Edelman / Music Paweł Mykietyn / Editor Grażyna Gradoń, Milenia Fiedler / Producer Michał Kwieciński / Production Akson Studio / Coproduction Telewizja Polska, Orange, Canal+, National Centre for Culture / Cast Robert Więckiewicz, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Rosaria Omaggio / Contact Films Boutique, Artcam Films, Akson Studio / Distributor Artcam Films
www: www.walesamanofhope.com

About the director

Andrzej Wajda (b. 1926, Suwałki, Poland) has devoted a substantial portion of his work to contemplating the fate of Poland. After debuting with A Generation (Pokolenie, 1954), he immortalized the Home Army resistance in Kanał (1956), Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, 1958), and The Ring with the Crowned Eagle (Pierścionek z orłem w koronie, 1992). He looked at the beginnings of the war in Speed (Lotna, 1959) and Chronicle of Love Affairs (Kronika wypadków miłosnych, 1985), and then at the postwar trauma of released Polish prisoners in Landscape after Battle (Krajobraz po bitwie, 1970). In 2007 he returned to the war in Katyń. His latest, Wałęsa. Man of Hope (2014), completes a trilogy begun in 1977 with a disillusioning portrait of a labor icon, Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru), followed four years later with the loose continuation Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981).