Adam Siemion Movies
- 1997
Andrzej Wajda directed this metaphoric coming-of-age story. Marysia (Anna Wielgucka) is a shy and withdrawn 15-year-old girl whose family moves from a small town to a large city. Marysia feels like an outcast until she meets Kasia (Anna Mucha), a bright and talented girl who takes Marysia under her wing and introduces her to a circle of student musicians and artists. Kasia insists that a life of emotional isolation is vital to the creative mind, but when she informs Marysia, who was raised a devout Catholic, that she must renounce her faith if she is to succeed as an artist, Marysia break ties with her friend. Marysia soon becomes close with Ewa (Anna Powierza), a girl from a wealthy family whose life of pleasure and privilege seems to be the opposite of Kasia's more ascetic worldview. However, in time Marysia discovers that they're linked in a way that she would have never imagined. Panna Nikt (Miss Nobody) premiered at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Based on a true story, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils, using flattery and bribes to win military contracts, and brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory. By staffing his plant with Jews who've been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops, Schindler has a dependable unpaid labor force. For Stern, a job in a war-related plant could mean survival for himself and the other Jews working for Schindler. However, in 1942, all of Krakow's Jews are assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, overseen by Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), an embittered alcoholic who occasionally shoots prisoners from his balcony. Schindler arranges to continue using Polish Jews in his plant, but, as he sees what is happening to his employees, he begins to develop a conscience. He realizes that his factory (now refitted to manufacture ammunition) is the only thing preventing his staff from being shipped to the death camps. Soon Schindler demands more workers and starts bribing Nazi leaders to keep Jews on his employee lists and out of the camps. By the time Germany falls to the allies, Schindler has lost his entire fortune -- and saved 1,100 people from likely death. Schindler's List was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture and a long-coveted Best Director for Spielberg, and it quickly gained praise as one of the finest American movies about the Holocaust. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, (more)
- 1990
The life of Polish pediatrician Janusz Korczak (Wojtek Pszoniak) is the subject of Andrzej Wajda'a docudrama. Also known as an author who wrote primarily for young readers, Korczak's name became legend as a result of the Jewish orphanage he established in Warsaw. When the invasion of the Nazis in 1939 forced him to move his students to the ghetto, he struggled on without provisions or adequate space, refusing to give in to Nazi pressures. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wojciech Pszoniak, Ewa Dalkowska, (more)
