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Katyń (film)

2007 film by Andrzej Wajda

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ714713 ↗
Source-derived summary

Katyń (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkatɨɲ]) is a 2007 Polish historical drama film about the 1940 Katyn massacre, directed by Andrzej Wajda. It is based on the book Post Mortem: The Story of Katyn by Andrzej Mularczyk. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for the 80th Academy Awards.

Plot

The events of Katyń are relayed through the eyes of the women, the mothers, wives, and daughters of the victims executed on Stalin's orders by the NKVD in 1940.

Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski) is a young Polish captain in the 8th Uhlan Regiment of Prince Józef Poniatowski, who keeps a detailed diary. In September 1939, following the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland, he is taken prisoner by the Red Army, which separates the officers from the enlisted men, who are allowed to return home, while the officers are held. His wife Anna (Maja Ostaszewska) and daughter Weronika, nicknamed "Nika" (Wiktoria Gąsiewska), find him shortly before he is deported to the USSR. Presented with an opportunity to escape, he refuses on the basis of his oath of loyalty to the Polish military.

Helped by a sympathetic Russian officer, Anna manages to return to the family's home in Kraków with her daughter. There, the Germans carry out Sonderaktion Krakau, shutting down Jagiellonian University and deporting professors to concentration camps. Andrzej's father is one of the professors deported; later, his wife gets a message that he died in a camp in 1941.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Katyń (film)” as 2007 film by Andrzej Wajda. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2007, 1940, 1939, 1941—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2007-01-01, 2007-09-17, 2009-09-17—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. The account is most persuasive where Katyń, film and Andrzej can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2007 film by Andrzej Wajda. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q714713. VIAF identifies the subject as 301136033. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 1940, 1939 and 1941.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Katyń (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Katyń (film) primary sources, Katyń (film) archive and Katyń research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Katyń (film)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Katyń (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.