Andrzej Wajda

Career after 1990

In 1990, Andrzej Wajda was honoured by the European Film Awards for his lifetime achievement, only the third director to be so honoured, after Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman. In the early 1990s, he was elected a senator and also appointed artistic director of Warsaw's Teatr Powszechny. He continued to make films set during World War II, including Korczak (1990), a story about a Jewish-Polish doctor who takes care of orphan children, in The Crowned-Eagle Ring (1993) and Holy Week (1995) specifically on Jewish-Polish relations. In 1994, Wajda presented his own film version of Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot in the fim Nastasja, starring Japanese actor Tamasoburo Bando in the double role of Prince Mishkin and Nastasja. The film's cinematographer was Paweł Edelman, who subsequently became one of Wajda's great collaborators. In 1996, the director went in a different direction with Miss Nobody, a coming-of-age drama that explored the darker and more spiritual aspects of a relationship between three high-school girls. In 1999, Wajda released the epic film Pan Tadeusz, based on the epic poem of the Polish 19th-century romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz.

A year later, at the 2000 Academy Awards, Wajda was presented with an honorary Oscar for his contribution to world cinema; he subsequently donated the award to Kraków's Jagiellonian University. In 2002, Wajda directed The Revenge, a film version of his 1980s comedy theatre production, with Roman Polanski in one of the main roles. In February 2006, Wajda received an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 2007, Katyń was released, a well-received film about the Katyń massacre, in which Wajda's father was murdered; the director also shows the dramatic situation of those who await their relatives (mothers, wives and children). The film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2008.

Wajda followed it with Sweet Rush (2009) with Krystyna Janda as a main character. It is partly based upon a short Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz novel. The film is dedicated to Edward Kłosiński, Janda's husband, a cinematographer and a long-time Wajda friend and co-worker who died of cancer the same year. For this film Wajda was awarded by Alfred Bauer Prize at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival. He received the Prix FIPRESCI during the 2009 European Film Awards. Walesa. Man of Hope (Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei), Wajda's biography of Lech Wałęsa, based on a script by Janusz Głowacki and starring Robert Więckiewicz in the title role, had its world premiere at the 2013 Venice International Film Festival. His last film was the 2016 Afterimage (Powidoki), starring Bogusław Linda as Polish avant-garde painter Władysław Strzemiński.

Wajda founded The Japanese Centre of Art and Technology in Kraków in 1994. In 2002, he founded and led his own film school with Polish filmmaker Wojciech Marczewski. Students of Wajda School take part in different film courses led by famous European film makers.