‘Smoleńsk’ to be shown at Polish Film Festival

The film is not part of the main competition as its producers did not submit the film to the festival’s selection panel.

Directed by veteran filmmaker Antoni Krauze, the movie focuses on the 2010 crash in Smolensk, western Russia, of a Polish government plane with 96 people on board, including President Lech Kaczyński and the First Lady, on 10 April 2010.

The main protagonist is an investigative journalist with a large private television station who is trying to probe all the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

In an interview earlier this year, Krauze described the plane crash as “the most tragic moment in Polish history since World War II, an event which affects the Poland of today and the life of Poles in an unusually strong way and which has led to deep divisions within Polish society”.

Interviewed for the latest edition of Tygodnik Solidarność, the director of the film said: “My dream is for my film to help heal this rift. I would like to see a day when we are all able to meet again along Krakowskie Przedmieście [close to the Presidential Palace where hundreds of thousands gathered in the days following the tragedy to pay tribute to its victims], in front of a memorial to the victims. I would like us, irrespective of professed views, to accept the fact that the search for truth about the causes of the Smolensk catastrophe is our common task.”

The screenplay is by Tomasz Łysiak, Antoni Krauze, Maciej Pawlicki (also the film’s producer) and Marcin Wolski. The music is by Michał Lorenc, one of Poland’s leading composers of film soundtracks. Cinematography was in the hands of Michał Pakulski. (mk/rg)