Ida (2013) dir. Paweł Pawlikowski
Set in Poland in 1962, it follows a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a Catholic nun. Orphaned as an infant during the German occupation of World War II, she must meet her aunt, a former Communist state prosecutor and only surviving relative, who tells her that her parents were Jewish. The two women embark on a road trip into the Polish countryside to learn the fate of their relatives.
Called a “compact masterpiece” and an “eerily beautiful road movie”, the film has also been said to “contain a cosmos of guilt, violence and pain”, even if certain historical events (German occupation of Poland, the Holocaust and Stalinism) remain unsaid: “none of this is stated, but all of it is built, so to speak, into the atmosphere: the country feels dead, the population sparse”.
Ida won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Polish film to do so.
Runtime: 1h22m
Venue: Harrie Massey LT
