August 27—October 1, 2026
Row House Cinema
4115 Butler St, Pittsburgh, PA 15201
Tickets
September 1, 2026
Cinestudio
300 Summit St, Hartford, CT 06106
Tickets
September 10 – December 17, 2026
Yale Film Archive
120 High St, New Haven, CT 06511
Tickets
October 9, 2026
Cinema Arts Centre
423 Park Ave, Huntington, NY 11743
October 9, 2026
Jacob Burns Film Center
364 Manville Rd, Pleasantville, NY 10570
October 10, 2026
SIFF Film Center
167 Republican St, Seattle, WA 98109
November 8, 2026
Trylon Cinema
2820 E 33rd St, Minneapolis, MN 55406
A Cinematic Landmark: Revisiting Andrzej Wajda
This autumn, American audiences are invited to return to the cinema for a retrospective celebrating the singular legacy of Andrzej Wajda. Officially designated as the Year of Andrzej Wajda, 2026 offers an extraordinary occasion to re-examine the master director’s oeuvre with fresh eyes, opening a vital, intergenerational dialogue on history, community, personal responsibility, and freedom.
Few filmmakers in the history of the medium have interrogated the narrative of modern Poland with such unyielding dedication, or illuminated so brilliantly how macro-political upheaval reshapes the interior lives of ordinary individuals. Across a monumental career, Wajda forged a body of work that stands both as a rigorous historical witness to Poland’s shifting social landscape and as an intimate study of human vulnerability.
Viewed collectively, these restored masterpieces present a sweeping portrait of a nation continually reckoning with its heritage, confronting its present, and daring to imagine its future. This retrospective affords a rare and essential opportunity to encounter Wajda’s vision in its true home: projected on the big screen, shared in the dark, in the presence of a collective audience.
Andrzej Wajda (born March 6, 1926, in Suwałki; died October 9, 2016, in Warsaw) was a film and theater director, screenwriter, and one of the most important figures in Polish culture of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Spanning more than six decades, his career encompassed dozens of film and theater productions, including more than 40 feature films that have become part of the canon of Polish and world cinema.
In 2000, Wajda received an Academy Honorary Award (an honorary Oscar) for his lifetime achievement. Among his many other honors were the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Man of Iron (1981), the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival (1998), and the Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement at the Berlinale (2006). Wajda was one of the filmmakers who shaped the movement known as the Polish Film School and, over the course of his career, helped define the direction of Polish cinema.
Wajda was also the founder, among other institutions, of Wajda School & Studio, established with filmmaker Wojciech Marczewski; the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków; and the Kyoto–Kraków Foundation.
