Award-winning director plans Jaruzelski movie
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
27.05.2015 17:18
Award-winning director Borys Lankosz is to make a film about General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the late communist leader who launched Poland's martial law crackdown in December 1981.
General Wojciech Jaruzelski declares martial law in December 1981. Photo: wikimedia commons
The film is to be based on the recent biography of the general by Mariusz Cieślik and Paweł Kowal, 'Jaruzelski: A Paradoxical Life'.
Lankosz will write the screenplay together with Cieślik.
The film will apparently concentrate on Jaruzelski's personal life, rather than politics.
Born into the nobility in 1923, Jaruzelski was brought up as part of a class that the Polish communists would vilify and handicap after taking power following World War II.
Jaruzelski himself was deported together with his family to Siberia following the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland in 1939, along with several hundred thousand other Polish citizens.
He saw his father die after performing forced labour in Siberia, and he went partially snowblind (hence the distinctive spectacles he wore for the rest of his life).
Nevertheless, when Stalin created an army from the deportees to fight the Germans, Jaruzelski swiftly rose up the ranks.
He ultimately became one of the most trusted and valued members of the party.
Borys Lankosz made waves on the international film festival circuit with his 2009 debut 'Reverse', an unlikely black comedy set in Stalinist Warsaw. He followed it up with this year's thriller 'A Grain of Truth,' which wrestles with ghosts from Poland's Jewish past.
No hints have been given yet as to which actor Lankosz would like to see in the role of Jaruzelski. (nh)
More on General Jaruzelski's divisive legacy