Wajda's Katyn in Oscar Running

Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's epic film about the 1940 Katyn massacre, simply titled Katyn, has been nominated for the foreign-language Academy Award, or Oscar. If Katyn wins the foreign film Oscar, it will be the first time for a Polish film to win the honour. The film is competing with Austrian historical drama The Counterfeiters about the Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald and a film about Chechnya titled 12, by Russian Nikita Mikhalkov, among others.

Wajda's film has already been viewed by over three million people in Poland alone, and the Oscar nomination has given it a chance to become much more widely known internationally. The film tells the story of several Polish officers and families affected by the Katyn massacre, in which the Soviet secret police murdered over 4,400 Polish soldiers, mainly officers, in the woods near Katyn (all in all 22,000 Poles were executed at various points in the Soviet Union in the Spring of 1940). Though discovered by the invading Nazi forces in 1943, the Soviets blamed the event on the Nazis and until the end of communism in Poland, the subject was not allowed to be debated or even brought up. Even today, few people outside of Poland know about the tragedy, and one of Wajda's goals is to bring these historical events to light. Wajda's own father was killed in the massacre.

In addition to Katyn, two other Polish films or individuals have been recognized by the Academy; first, Peter & the Wolf, shot at and co-produced by Se-Ma-For studios in Lodz, has been nominated for best animated short film. Also, Janusz Kaminski has been nominated for his cinematography work on two Julian Schnabel films. Wajda himself received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2000, but his films have yet to win an Oscar - until this year, let us hope! The Academy Awards will take place on the 24th of February in Hollywood.