Media Contact: Lainé Slater, laine@viff.org
604-685-0260
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Oscar Nominee 2008 Best Foreign Language Film.

"Katyn is bravura film-making..." — The Guardian

KATYN

  
 

Fri July 17 - Sat July 18
& Mon July 20-Thurs July 23 // 6:15 & 8:30 pm
Sun July 19 // 2:30 & 5:00 pm

Director: Andrzej Wajda // Poland 2007 // 121 minutes // 35mm

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Over a long and distinguished career Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds; Man of Iron; Danton) has repeatedly forged powerful cinema from political upheaval. Now, at the age of 82, Poland's greatest filmmaker confronts the most painful episode in modern Polish history: the massacre of more than 20,000 men at the hands of the Soviet army in the spring of 1940. Ordered by Stalin, the action seems to have been designed to wipe out the country's best and brightest: leaders, teachers, and thousands of officers among them, the director's own father.

As you would expect, Wajda has the full measure of this subject, tackling not just the atrocity itself (in the film's devastating climax) but the crippling aftermath of the Communists' subsequent cover-up. A sober, unsparing, indelible film.

Katyn opened the the Polish Film Festival in 2007 where it received a silent ovation from the festival audience. Since its premiere Katyn has leapt to the top of the Polish box office, drawing 270,000 admissions on 189 copies in its opening weekend.

"Wajda has made one of the movies' most potent evocations of a gruesome twentieth-century ritual—a stunning, epic film" —David Denby, The New Yorker

"Wajda is in his 80s, but he hasn't lost his knack for marshalling crowds, choreographing elaborate set-pieces, staging chases and cranking up the emotions.” - Geoffrey Macnab, The Guardian

RELATED LINKS

Read an article by Anne Applebaum in the New York Review of Books

Katyn massacre allowed in Russian court, read a story on Radio Nederland

REVIEWS

New York Times review , Film Journal

  

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Call the FILM INFO LINE: 604.683.FILM (3456) for the latest info and listings. Tickets can be purchased in advance on-line at www.vifc.org or in person 30 minutes before showtime.

Adult tickets: $10 (Double Bill - $13)
Student/Senior $8 (Double Bill - $11)
Matinees $8

As a registered non-profit society, the VIFC screens films that have not always been seen by the BC Film Classification Board. Under BC law, any person wishing to see these unclassified films must belong to the VIFC Society and be 19 years or older. Valid for one year based on the date of purchase, the VIFC basic membership cost is $2.00.

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Vancity Theatre is located at 1181 Seymour St. (at Davie)