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    Oscar-winning director: Poles should see “Ida” not debate it

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments1222 Views
    Director of Oscar-winning Polish movie “Ida” Pawel Pawlikowski, center, with the award for the best foreign language film and actress Agata Trzebuchowska, left, talk to Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski about their success at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, Poland on Monday, March 2, 2015. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
    WARSAW, Poland (AP) --

    The director of "Ida," the Polish movie that won this year's Oscar for best foreign film, said Monday that Poles should see it before calling it anti-Polish.

    "Ida" premiered in Poland in 2013, but attracted little attention despite winning best picture in Poland's main movie festival.

    Now the Oscar and a slew of other international awards have generated intense debate about whether it's unpatriotic, a charge leveled by right-wing politicians.

    The movie is about Ida, a young woman preparing to be a nun, who discovers she is Jewish and that her parents were murdered by a Polish peasant during World War II.

    Detractors argue that the movie lacks the historic background of terror under Nazi German occupation of Poland during the war. They say it fails to mention that many Poles saved Jews, despite the fact such actions were punishable by death.

    Polish-British director Pawel Pawlikowski has brushed off the criticism, saying his movie is about identity not history.

    At a meeting Monday with President Bronislaw Komorowski he suggested that not all those engaging in the debate had seen "Ida."

    "I'd rather you saw the film," Pawlikowski said, "not debated it." 

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    Tags:IdaPawel Pawlikowski



    William Dafoe, Jonathan Bailey and Peter Dinklage join the voice cast for Starburn Industries’ “Lincoln in the Bardo”

    Friday, August 28, 2026
    Peter Dinklage (photo by Whitney Matewe)

    Actors Willem Dafoe, Jonathan Bailey and Peter Dinklage have joined the voice cast of Starburns Industries’ “Lincoln in the Bardo,” based on acclaimed author George Saunders’ New York Times bestseller and 2017 Booker Prize-winner.  Saunders adapted the screenplay, with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Duke Johnson directing.  It was announced earlier that Tom Hanks stars as the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, in the live action portion of the film.  CAA Media Finance and WME Independent are handling sales at the upcoming TIFF: The Market.

    The film employs a unique blend of stop-motion animation and live action to explore one of the most intimate moments of Lincoln’s life, centering on his relationship with his recently deceased eleven-year-old son.  Blending history and imagination, the story unfolds through an unforgettable ensemble of characters – living and dead, historical and invented – to explore themes of love, empathy, and the human capacity for connection in the face of unimaginable grief.

    Reverend Everly Thomas – the ghost of a minister who died believing he would go to heaven, but, to his dismay, found out otherwise – is voiced by Dafoe.  Bailey is voicing Roger Bevins, the ghost of a young gay man who took his own life over a failed love affair and instantly regretted it.  Dinklage is voicing Hans Vollman, a ghost obsessed with his dream of being reunited with his much-younger wife.

    Four-time Academy Award nominee Dafoe’s credits include animated films “Finding Nemo,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “The Boy and the Heron,” as well as “At Eternity’s Gate,” “The Florida Project,” “Shadow of the Vampire” and seminal Vietnam movie... Read More

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