Critics call for changes to ‘Ida’ screenplay
PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea
22.01.2015 15:22
While all eyes are on how well Polish film ‘Ida’ will do at this year’s Oscars, at least one group is up in arms against the way the feature film portrays history.
The Polish Anti-Defamation League has written to the National Film Institute (PISF) that Ida omits important parts of Polish history, and this is not the image of Poland which a Polish film should be portraying.
These untruths include a lack of reference to the Nazi German occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945, where a systematic extermination policy of Jews was put into place, the League writes in a letter cited by Gazeta Wyborcza.
Such erroneous depictions shed a bad light on the brave Poles who fought against Nazism, the League opines.
The League also wants several key sequences in the film to be reshot, in a way to depict real events.
Historian Marcin Zaremba says that the team behind Ida had a right to take some artistic license with the film.
“Cinema concentrates on its characters, psychology and the human element of history,” he said, adding that the petition is “stupid and nationalistic.”
The winners of this year’s Oscars will be announced on 22 February. (rg)