Katyn

In the opening scene of KATYN, a group of Polish citizens who are fleeing the Nazis from one side of a bridge suddenly collide with their countrymen escaping from the Soviets on the other side of the bridge. KATYN is set at the dawn of World War II, when all Polish officers found themselves as POWs in Soviet internment. Suddenly, husbands, brothers, and sons were taken away with no explanation; and too many wives, sisters, and daughters were left waiting, wondering, hoping. Among them is Anna who is searching for her husband, Andrzej, a Krakow Cavalry Regiment captain. She and thousands of other women struggle with the obscurity and anguish of missing loved ones. For years they waited, until in 1943 when the Germans uncovered mass graves, not unlike those of the Holocaust, of over 15,000 Polish POW's and citizens murdered in the Katyn Forest by the Soviet NKVD. And as Germany and the Soviet Union each try to blame the other for the massacre, the people of Poland find themselves not knowing what to believe. The Katyn Massacre was one of history's most tragic war crimes. For many years after WWII, the subject of Katyn was off limits and the truth was decisively falsified. This film is about the people of Poland's unshakable struggle for memory and truth. (In Polish, German and Russian with English subtitles) – KL