Wajda was a Polish director and screenwriter, born as Andrzej Witold Wajda. He was one of the most famous members of the “Polish Film School” that consisted of directors who were active between 1955 and 1963. His mother was a teacher and father captain of the Polish army. He spent a happy childhood until the beginning of WW II and the soviet and German invasions to Poland.  In 1940, soviets murdered his father at the massacre in the Katyn forest. Andrzej survived the war with his mother and brother and from 1942 until the end of the war he was a member of the Polish resistance. In 1946, he moved to Krakow film directing in Lódź and directed several films during that time. After assisting the director Aleksander Ford on his film Five from Barska Street (1954), he directed his first feature films A Generation (Pokolenie). It is a war drama which constitutes a trilogy about life in Poland during WW II together with his two next films Canal (Kanal, 1956) i Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i diament, 1958). Canal won the special jury award in Cannes (together with Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal), and Ashes and Diamonds the FIPRESCI award in Venice. In 1959, he directed his first film in color Lotna. During the 1960’s he directed the black and white romantic drama Innocent Sorcerers (Niewinni czarodzieje, 1960), war drama Samson (1961) and Siberian Lady Macbeth (1962) in Yugoslav production. In Poland he directed the war drama The Ashes (Popioły, 1965), and in Belgrade the British-Yugoslav co-production – historical drama Gates to Paradise (1968). In Poland he directed the personal drama Everything for Sale (Wszystko na sprzedaź, 1968) dedicated to the memory of the film actor Zbigniew Cybulski who suddenly died. The last film that he directed in the 1960’s was the romantic comedy Hunting Flies (Polowanie na muchy, 1969). He returned to war with the drama Landscape after Battle (Krajobraz po bitwie, 1970). He worked with the actor Daniel Olbrychski on the drama The Birch Wood (Brzezina, 1970) and the successful historical drama The promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, 1975), which was nominated for an Oscar in the category for best foreign film, and which won the Golden Lion at the Polish Film Festival (together with Noce i dnie by Jerzy Antczak). Besides directing films, Wajda is an equally successful theater play director and thus some of his films were actually film adaptations of plays, such as: The Wedding (Wesele, 1973), The Maids of Wilko (Panny z Wilka, 1979) and the aforementioned The Promised Land. In addition, in the 1970’s he directed the drama Rough Treatment (Bez znieczulenia, 1978) which won the award of the ecumenical jury in Cannes in 1979 and the drama Man of Marble (Czlowiek z marmuru, 1976) which won another FIPRESCI award in Cannes in 1978 as well as the award from the Film critics at the Polish Film Festival in 1977. Its sequel Man of Iron (Czlowiek z żelaza, 1981) follows the same characters and it brought Wajda the Golden Palm and the ecumenical jury’s award at Cannes. The film was nominated for an Oscar in the category for best foreign film but it was withdrawn from the competition by the Polish communist government. The topic of the film is the fight for workers’ rights and in a smaller role it featured Lech Wałęsa, who was then president of the syndicate Solidarity which in time became the resistance movement against the ruling communist regime. Wajda, who was famous for the allegorical critique of communism in his films, joined the Solidarity in 1981 and remained its member until 1989. His film Danton (1983), directed in France and starring Gérard Depardieu, was about the French revolution and it won the French film award César as best director. In Germany he directed the drama Eine Liebe in Deutschland (1983). In French production he directed the film adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel The Possessed (Les possédés, 1988), and in Poland the drama Chronicle of Amorous Accidents (Kronika ljubavnih događaja, 1986). Many of his films won awards at international film festivals and in 1990 he received the European life-time achievement award. In 1996, at the Berlin Film Festival he received the Silver Bear for his for an outstanding artistic contribution and in Venice in 1998, he received the Golden Lion for his entire career. In 2000 he was awarded an honorary Oscar for life—time achievement. Even though he was most active in the 1970’s he continued to direct films until the end of his life. Several films from the 1990’s stand out: biographical drama Korczak (1990), film adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel Nastasja (1994) and war drama Pan Tadeusz (1999), which was his most successful film from that time. He also directed the historical comedy Zemsta (2002), film version of his theatre production from 1980 in which he once again collaborated with Roman Polanski (after Innocent Sorcerers). In 2006, he was awarded the honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. His historical war drama Katyn (2007) about the massacre from WW II, to which he lost his own father, was equally successful with the critics as the audience. It won the Eagle award as best film at the Polish Film Awards in 2008 and it was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film in that same year. His intimate drama Tatarak (2009) wa somewhat less successful and he returned to historical themes with his biopic about Lech Walesa Walesa. Man of Hope (Walesa. Czlowiek z nadziei, 2013). His last film was also a biopic Powidoki (2016) about the avant-garde Polish artist. He died in late 2016 from lung failure at the age of ninety. He was the president of the Polish Film Association from 1978 to 1983. Besides being a chronicler of Polish social realism he was an active participant of politics as a senator of Polish Republic from 1989 to1991, as well as the member of the presidential committee for culture from 1992 to 1994. In 1994 in Krakow, he founded the Japanese Center for Art and Technology and in 1997 he was accepted to the French Academy of Fine Arts (Académie des Beaux Arts).