Wajda (Poland, 1926-2016) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and at the Lodz Higher Film School. In 1955 he directed his first film, Generation, and in 1962 he also went on to direct theater. His films include Canal (1957), Ashes and Diamonds (1958), The Gates of Paradise (1968), The Birch Trees (1970, for which he won his first international prize, at the Moscow Festival), Landscape after the Battle (1970), The Land of Great Promise (1974, adaptation of the work of the Polish writer Stanislaw W. Reymont, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924), Shadow Line (1976, based on the work of the Anglo-Polish Joseph Conrad), The Man of Marble (1977, awarded by the Fipresci in Cannes), Les Demoiselles de Wilko (1979), The Conductor (1979, awarded in Berlin), The Iron Man (1981, Palme d'Or at Cannes), Danton (1983) and A Love in Germany (1983). After the original publication of this work, he would direct The Possessed (1988), Crime and Punishment (1992) and Nastasia (1994), all three based on Dostoevsky, as well as Easter (1995), Pan Tedeusz (1999) and the segment The Man of Hope, about Lech Walesa, which is part of Solidarity, Solidarity ... (2005).