The final film from acclaimed Polish director Andrzej Wajda, who died in 2016 at age 90, Afterimage is a penetrating and gorgeous biopic of avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski. Losing an arm and a leg in World War I, at home Strzeminski becomes an abstract artist, teacher, and lecturer at the Higher School of Visual Arts in Lodz, which he helped to found. But when Poland embraces the strict new Stalinist codes of Social Realism in art, declaring it must “meet the needs of the people,” Strzeminski finds himself an outcast, stripped of his job and his membership in the collective (thus denying him the paint he so desperately needs), and reduced to extreme poverty. A deeply personal film, as Wajda’s own father was killed at the hands of the Stalinist government, Afterimage should not be missed. Poland’s official entry to the 2016 Academy Awards.
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