Ida (film)

For the 2011 Danish film, see ID:A.

Ida
Polish theatrical release poster
Directed byPaweł Pawlikowski
Written by
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography
Edited byJarosław Kamiński
Music byKristian Eidnes Andersen
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 7 September 2013 (2013-09-07) (TIFF)
  • 11 September 2013 (2013-09-11) (Poland)
Running time
82 minutes[1]
Countries
  • Poland
  • Denmark
  • France
  • United Kingdom
Languages
  • Polish
  • French
  • Latin
Budget$2.6 million[2]
Box office$15.3 million[2]

Ida (Polish: [ˈida]) is a 2013 drama film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and written by Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Set in Poland in 1962, it follows a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a Catholic nun. Orphaned as an infant during the German occupation of World War II, she must meet her aunt, a former Communist state prosecutor and only surviving relative, who tells her that her parents were Jewish. The two women embark on a road trip into the Polish countryside to learn the fate of their relatives.

Hailed as a "compact masterpiece" and an "eerily beautiful road movie", the film has also been said to "contain a cosmos of guilt, violence and pain", even if certain historical events (German occupation of Poland, the Holocaust and Stalinism) remain unsaid: "none of this is stated, but all of it is built, so to speak, into the atmosphere: the country feels dead, the population sparse".[3][4][5]

Ida won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Polish film to do so.[6] It had earlier been selected as Best Film of 2014 by the European Film Academy and as Best Film Not in the English Language of 2014 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).[7][8] In 2016, the film was named as the 55th best film of the 21st century, from a poll of 177 film critics from around the world.[9]

  1. ^ "Ida (12A)". British Board of Film Classification. 28 July 2014. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  2. ^ a b "Ida (2018) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Retrieved 4 November 2018.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Denby was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Bradshaw, Peter (25 September 2014). "Ida review – an eerily beautiful road movie". The Guardian.
  5. ^ Scott, A. O. (1 May 2014). "An Innocent Awakened: 'Ida,' About an Excavation of Truth in Postwar Poland". The New York Times.
  6. ^ Barraclough, Leo (23 February 2015). "Polish Film Institute Chief Celebrates as 'Ida' Becomes First Polish Movie to Win Foreign-Language Film Oscar". Variety.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference EuroFilm was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference BAFTA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ "The 21st Century's 100 greatest films". BBC. 23 August 2016. Retrieved 16 September 2016.