Winning both the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, Pawel Pawlikowski's film creeps into your bones like the film's chilly weather.
1960s Poland: orphan Anna, a week before becoming a nun, discovers she has a surviving aunt who must be visited before taking her vows. Wanda is a former favoured judge with the Communists, now cynical and seeking solace in drink and men.
Anna is stunned to learn they are Jewish and her real name is Ida. Wanda reveals Ida's parents were murdered in WWII by Poles who had promised to shelter them, and despite warnings that only sadness awaits them, Ida demands they visit her family's village.
Provoked by the villagers' silence, Wanda's reawakened sense of justice leads them to the tragic reality which changes them both.
Running 82 minutes, Pawlikowski directs with a forensic economy that, with committed performances and haunting cinematography, lingers in the memory.
Shelf or charity shop? Undecided... I think I should share this one with others...
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