What did the ashes hide from us? : Inside and around Andrzej Wajda's film

The spring of '45 is a controversial and tragic time in the history of Poland. The long-awaited peace was overshadowed by fear of the onset of a new dictatorship, and many fighters of the anti-Hitler underground went into the anti-Soviet underground, but the war with the new system took on the features of a civil war: Poles shot at Poles. Thirteen years later, during the thaw and censorship easing, an outstanding Polish film about these events was released: “Ashes and Diamonds” by Andrzej Wajda.

On the centenary of the director’s birth, journalist Ivan Belyaev wrote a guide to this recognized masterpiece of world cinema, which was admired by Andrei Tarkovsky and Francis Ford Coppola. Working at the intersection of film studies and history, the author weaves together a story about the film itself, the time of its action and the era of its creation.