Deliberately paced, bleak and a touch repetitive, Afterimages is a swan song from one of the greats, who, much like his subject, leaves viewers with a treatise on how to look at the world.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 15, 2017

Wajda brings such a controlled fervor to this portrait because it's clear that, like Strzeminski, he identifies as a dissident in dangerous times.

| Original Score: A | May 26, 2017

"Afterimage" feels vividly connected to the Polish auteur's beginnings, yet also acts as the kind of haunting close that sums up a life.

| May 25, 2017

Afterimage is mounted in a classical, beautifully understated style that throughout conveys the assurance of a true master.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 19, 2017

This is an angry, vivid, passionate film.

| May 17, 2017

Afterimage however is crisp, brisk, understated, and straightforward, untainted by the bluish haze that seems endemic to European period films.

| May 17, 2017

Afterimage suffers from a clunky script and an overdetermined formal palette.

| Original Score: C+ | May 17, 2017

Director and co-writer Andrzej Wajda's story is a vise that inexorably tightens on the artist as he loses his job, his gallery, and the professional credentials required for artists to work.

| May 17, 2017

Andrzej Wajda's film is a lean, unwavering look at the effects of artistic idealism in the face of fascist doctrine.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 14, 2017

Wajda is so determined to depict his hero as a man of iron that his every pronouncement comes freighted with metaphorical significance.

| May 8, 2017

After 90 years and more than 50 films, Wajda has earned the right to make stagey period pieces like Afterimage, minor codas to a gloriously symphonic career.

| Feb 22, 2017

As glum as it may seem - to the point of playing, in places, like a parody of a despondent Eastern European art-house drama - Afterimage succeeds in knowingly succumbing to the tragedy of Strzemiński's story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 3, 2017

Andrzej Wajda, one of Poland's greatest filmmakers, closed out his long career with this unusually personal and despairing biopic of the avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski.

| Nov 10, 2016

Another significant chapter in Polish history from Wajda, albeit one unlikely to travel as widely as some of his past subjects.

| Sep 21, 2016