Katyn

2007

2h 1m

Drama

List

91%

68 Reviews

Tomatometer

75%

5,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

In 1940, at the beginning of World War II, Soviet soldiers conduct a mass execution of captured Polish officers. With Hitler's forces rapidly advancing into Eastern Europe, a surviving Polish officer, Lt. Jerzy (Andrzej Chyra), at great risk to his own life, chooses to stay behind with his wife, Anna (Maja Ostaszewska). As the Germans round up Lt. Jerzy and other officers, propaganda efforts cover up the truth about the Soviet soldiers' shocking brutality.

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Critics Consensus

Masterfully crafted by an experienced directorial hand, Katyn is a powerful, personal depiction of wartime tragedy.

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Georgan G

History buffs may already know about this crime of murdering 22,000 Polish Officers and intellectuals, but it was a horrible surprise to me. Not all atrocities during WWII were committed by the Nazi Germans, including this one.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

08/25/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A poorly structured and complicated film with some impactful scenes. I was really interested to learn about the Katyn massacre and due to the amount of praise this film received I believed this film would be very well-directed with powerful scenes. The film does have some powerful scenes especially at the end. However, the whole film is a mess. The film jumps around so much it becomes really disorienting. There is one point where a woman needs to get to Krakow but she is disallowed and nearly taken captive. Then, the next scene she is in Krakow with a small comment regarding how she arrived. There is this whole build up for nothing. Another woman and daughter are taken by the guards who end up in Krakow with no reason as to how they were released. A male character is introduced who wants to join art school and is rejected because of his beliefs regarding who committed the Katyn massacre. He befriends the older daughter and then is killed. There is no reaction to his death by anyone which makes the viewer feel like his introduction was pointless to the plot of the film. The film is also very overdramatised at times and the cinematography is weak. The film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture but lost to The Counterfeiters. I haven't seen the other nominees but I doubt they were as bad as this film. Overall, a confusing, over-dramatic film with some chilling scenes but it doesn't do enough to create an engaging film.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/11/23

Full Review

william d

The movie leaps ahead in time without warning and jumps between characters without any cohesiveness, The subject matter is interesting, it's just that the film could have been better.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Liam D

A powerful experience This war is a impactful movie that tells a shocking tragedy in history

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/22/21

Full Review

Audience Member

It's very easy to sit in front of a chair and criticize whether you like a movie or not when in the midst of your arrogant self assurance you think you are nothing but an spectator that MUST be entertained rather than someone who can learn something. Lets not forget that the line between good and evil lies at the heart of every man and we must choose every day which part we manifest. I did not say that, a Holocaust survivor and a Gulag survivor did. The first, a renown professor of Psychology, friends with Sigmund Freud and founder of Logotheraphy. The later a Nobel of Literature Russian writer who lived throughout the Archipelago. I, for once am heavy hearted for seeing the constant indifference of the same kind of people that with their attitude allow things like this to happen over and over again throughout human history. But such is the product of mass consumerism: NUMBING and narcissistic indifference as yet another alternative to express human capacity for self destruction. This movie was made by Poles, survivors of Totalitarian Communism, yet is reviewed by many Westeners, proficient at the religion of CONSUMERISM who with their shallowness and indifference succeed at perpetuating evil through the comfort of their couches while in the course of decades they jump from one extreme of wickedness and repression to the opposite extreme of FALSE virtuosity to ultimately try to quiet down the inner voices that alert them about their perpetual indifference and shallow existence from a privileged position they didn't earn and don't know what to do with to make things actually better. As for the movie, I was reminded that Communism(or any other previous and later iteration of it) is way older than the doctrines of Marx and Lenin, that it lives in the minds of every human and that's all that really matters. Leave your miserable ego at the door and REMEMBER, before there were ADHD inducing smartphones and you were used to being catered to 24/7 by the same formulaic dopamine inducing form of "ENTERNAINTMENT", we were human. This IS a good movie, told in the style of the Eastern block by Central Europeans. A movie charged by symbolic meaning and filled with clues and hints that give insight into the patterns of human behavior that create such environments as the USSR .Patterns that exist everywhere, including the reviews of many "viewers" of this movie. There's nothing disjointed here, this is exactly what is like to live in Communism with its ultimate result: the death of your spirit, or the death of your body as you see other people go through the same thing while everyone either denies it or dies from not doing just that.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/18/23

Full Review

andrey k

Very hard movie about the horrendous crime of Soviet regime against Polish people. But I found the storyline a bit hard to follow with its uneven transition from one scene to another with too many different characters.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

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Andrzej Wajda

Director

Joachim Paul Assböck

Sturmbannfuehrer Mueller

Waldemar Barwiński

Polish Officer

Stanisława Celińska

Stasia

Andrzej Chyra

Jerzy

Magdalena Cielecka

Agnieszka

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Ty Burr

Boston Globe

Rated: 3/4

Nov 24, 2011

Full Review

Hank Sartin

Time Out

Rated: 3/5

Nov 18, 2011

Full Review

Joshua Rothkopf

Time Out

Rated: 3/5

Nov 17, 2011

Full Review

David Harris

Spectrum Culture

Unfortunately, the history behind the film is more engaging than the movie itself.

Rated: 2.5/5

Oct 9, 2019

Full Review

Mattie Lucas

From the Front Row

Far too weak structurally to have the emotional impact it should.

Rated: 2.5/4

Jul 7, 2019

Full Review

Anne Applebaum

The New York Review of Books

Katyn is deliberately intended to inspire patriotism, in the most positive sense of the word.

Aug 23, 2018

Full Review

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Synopsis

In 1940, at the beginning of World War II, Soviet soldiers conduct a mass execution of captured Polish officers. With Hitler's forces rapidly advancing into Eastern Europe, a surviving Polish officer, Lt. Jerzy (Andrzej Chyra), at great risk to his own life, chooses to stay behind with his wife, Anna (Maja Ostaszewska). As the Germans round up Lt. Jerzy and other officers, propaganda efforts cover up the truth about the Soviet soldiers' shocking brutality.

Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenwriter: Andrzej Mularczyk, Andrzej Wajda
Genre: Drama
Original Language: Polish
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 18, 2020
Box Office (Gross USA): $114.8K
Runtime: 2h 1m