Director Hopes War Film Stays Out of Politics

Geir Moulson - Associated Press

BERLIN -- Veteran Polish director Andrzej Wajda hopes his Oscar-nominated depiction of the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by Soviet secret police won't get tangled up in politics - but suggests it could help with reconciliation.

Wajda, 81, presented "Katyn" on Friday at the Berlin film festival, where the movie - one of this year's Oscar nominees for best foreign-language film - is showing out of competition.

He recalled that the killings, for which Moscow took responsibility only in 1990, were a taboo issue under communist rule. Only after communism collapsed "were we able to even think of making a film like this," Wajda said through an interpreter at a news conference. "I'm so pleased that I have actually managed to make this film."

Wajda also stressed that the film is not aimed against Russia, with which his country has tense relations.

"This is a film of mourning, showing the events that occurred - it's not a political film," he said. "I think ... the issue is too painful, it is too tragic to allow it to be manipulated from a political viewpoint, either in Poland or anywhere else. It's simply not appropriate."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended Friday's screening and posed with Wajda and his cast on the red carpet. Wajda described that as a "wonderful gesture."

"Perhaps it's also a pointer for us all that says it's simply not possible to move forward without talking about the past, and that this film may play a big role in that," he said.

Ties between Berlin and Warsaw have frequently been strained over recent years by tensions stemming from the Nazis' brutal World War II occupation of Poland.

The movie evoked strong personal memories for Wajda: his father, Lt. Jakub Wajda, was among the victims of Katyn, and his mother refused to give up hope that he might have survived, since his name never appeared on any official list of Polish soldiers killed in World War II.

"Right up until 1950 ,when she died, she simply did not want to believe that my father would not return from the war," Wajda said. "She wrote to the Red Cross, she sent letters to Switzerland, to London, hoping ... that he would be somewhere."

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