History buffs may already know about this crime of murdering 22,000 Polish Officers and intellectuals, but it was a horrible surprise to me. Not all atrocities during WWII were committed by the Nazi Germans, including this one.

A poorly structured and complicated film with some impactful scenes. I was really interested to learn about the Katyn massacre and due to the amount of praise this film received I believed this film would be very well-directed with powerful scenes. The film does have some powerful scenes especially at the end. However, the whole film is a mess. The film jumps around so much it becomes really disorienting. There is one point where a woman needs to get to Krakow but she is disallowed and nearly taken captive. Then, the next scene she is in Krakow with a small comment regarding how she arrived. There is this whole build up for nothing. Another woman and daughter are taken by the guards who end up in Krakow with no reason as to how they were released. A male character is introduced who wants to join art school and is rejected because of his beliefs regarding who committed the Katyn massacre. He befriends the older daughter and then is killed. There is no reaction to his death by anyone which makes the viewer feel like his introduction was pointless to the plot of the film. The film is also very overdramatised at times and the cinematography is weak. The film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture but lost to The Counterfeiters. I haven't seen the other nominees but I doubt they were as bad as this film. Overall, a confusing, over-dramatic film with some chilling scenes but it doesn't do enough to create an engaging film.

The movie leaps ahead in time without warning and jumps between characters without any cohesiveness, The subject matter is interesting, it's just that the film could have been better.

A powerful experience This war is a impactful movie that tells a shocking tragedy in history

It's very easy to sit in front of a chair and criticize whether you like a movie or not when in the midst of your arrogant self assurance you think you are nothing but an spectator that MUST be entertained rather than someone who can learn something. Lets not forget that the line between good and evil lies at the heart of every man and we must choose every day which part we manifest. I did not say that, a Holocaust survivor and a Gulag survivor did. The first, a renown professor of Psychology, friends with Sigmund Freud and founder of Logotheraphy. The later a Nobel of Literature Russian writer who lived throughout the Archipelago. I, for once am heavy hearted for seeing the constant indifference of the same kind of people that with their attitude allow things like this to happen over and over again throughout human history. But such is the product of mass consumerism: NUMBING and narcissistic indifference as yet another alternative to express human capacity for self destruction. This movie was made by Poles, survivors of Totalitarian Communism, yet is reviewed by many Westeners, proficient at the religion of CONSUMERISM who with their shallowness and indifference succeed at perpetuating evil through the comfort of their couches while in the course of decades they jump from one extreme of wickedness and repression to the opposite extreme of FALSE virtuosity to ultimately try to quiet down the inner voices that alert them about their perpetual indifference and shallow existence from a privileged position they didn't earn and don't know what to do with to make things actually better. As for the movie, I was reminded that Communism(or any other previous and later iteration of it) is way older than the doctrines of Marx and Lenin, that it lives in the minds of every human and that's all that really matters. Leave your miserable ego at the door and REMEMBER, before there were ADHD inducing smartphones and you were used to being catered to 24/7 by the same formulaic dopamine inducing form of "ENTERNAINTMENT", we were human. This IS a good movie, told in the style of the Eastern block by Central Europeans. A movie charged by symbolic meaning and filled with clues and hints that give insight into the patterns of human behavior that create such environments as the USSR .Patterns that exist everywhere, including the reviews of many "viewers" of this movie. There's nothing disjointed here, this is exactly what is like to live in Communism with its ultimate result: the death of your spirit, or the death of your body as you see other people go through the same thing while everyone either denies it or dies from not doing just that.

Excellent film about Poland spanning from 1939-1943. The film explores events leading up to and after the Katyn Forest murders. Multiple points of view and shifts in time periods make this grim story a wonderful dialogue about truth, justice and adversity under war time and fascist oppression. Bravo Wadja, a Polish national treasure.

A few historical mistakes, but overall a strong indictment of the atrocities of the Soviet Army against the Polish officers and their families in 1940. Conveniently missing from the movie was the cynical inaction of the allies. If Great Britain and France declared war on Germany after it invaded Poland why haven't they declared war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland 16 days after Germany? That gave the Russians a tragic free pass. Why wasn't Katyn denounced during the war? The whole world let Poland down.

Polish second world war film centred on the massacre of the same name and it's cover up. The picture is a little slow and muddled with characters being introduced and dropping out without structure.

Too restrained! Disjointed narrative clumsily told!

The chilling reality is that this mass murdering continues world-wide. I fear that it could happen in my own country.

An overlooked wartime tragedy is given commemoration in this remarkable history drama. It's not hard to realise this is a deeply person film for Andrej Wajda, whose concise and very touchingly humanist approach makes this movie suitably harrowing and fascinating.

The true story of a brutal war crime.

Having lost his own father in the event which the film recounts, with experienced direction Wajda once again unearths an obscure moment in Poland's troubled history with this powerful depiction of the wartime tragedy. Rather than being a film about individual characters, Katyn works better as a solemn moment of cinematic commemoration, which is why the final sequence is so intense.

The best movie ever!

It's hard to review a film like this. We see vignettes, set pieces meant to inform us of what is happening. The acting in these scenes is not entirely natural. Characters make speeches and they are a bit worn as characters, we know them already. The narrative is disjointed, characters appear suddenly, add another tile to the mosaic of the crimes committed against the Poles, and then die or disappear in prison. There are some powerful scenes - the imprisonment of the academics, the murder of the officers. It is a bleak, depressing progression of deepening cynicism or hopelessness in the face of lies, murder and crushing totalitarianism. Knowing that Poles did finally get out from under the brutal system is helpful in watching this. The cinematography is quite accomplished. Best line -"I would know if a piece of me had died, and no part of me is dead yet." Roughly quoted.

one of those movies that helps the rest of the world know what its like to be a Pole.

Grim tale of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Stalin's secret service that is enlivened by a look at the interwoven relationships of those directly affected. Legendary director Andzrej Wajda (in his 80s) brings his personal experience (as a director and a person whose father was killed in the Katyn Forest) to bear on another tale from Polish history. True, those not familiar with that history (told fluently in Wajda's earlier films) might get a little lost but the power of the story will still crush you (especially the horrific final scenes). Humans can be brutal.

Interesting account of the terrible Polish army soldier massacre by the hand of our dear old friend Josif Stalin. In the film we can witness "the other monsters", those that were almost forgotten by history but were the same or worse than the Nazis, the Soviets, who used Poland as a battlefield as well as the Nazis. I've seen many movies about how two fronts literally fucked up Poland...but still many people do not listen. Keep them coming cause I stand with them.

Wajda... mais uma vez maravilhoso. :-)

Rating: 1 star Arthouse rating: 1.5 stars I'll be in the minority and say I could not stand this film at all. The performances were all over the place, I'd rather have the actors be consistently horrific than seeing a talented actor standing by a zombie on a move set. It was either to forced or to weak, and a few good supporting roles. The one that stood out was the Nazi officer closing the university. The director pushed for accurate and strong scenery, but it was so grey that it caused a sleeping effect. I realize it's intended to be a drama, but even the bright colors (like a red communist flag) would be dark. It seemed to be searching for a tone dialectal wise. The same minute one is celebrating she breaks down. The main character was annoying, and I honestly could not finish the film, which hasn't happened in awhile. I could care less how it worked it out, it had the passion, but not the result.