Films We Like is very pleased to announce that Pawel Pawlikowski’s IDA won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.
This is an historic Oscar win, as it is Poland’s first Academy Award in this category.
IDA was also nominated this year for Best Cinematography (Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski).
IDA is an intimate drama about a young novitiate nun in 1960s Poland who, on the verge of taking her vows, discovers a dark family secret dating from the terrible years of the Nazi occupation. 18-year-old Anna, a sheltered orphan raised in a convent, is preparing to become a nun when the Mother Superior insists she first visit her sole living relative. Naïve, innocent Anna soon finds herself in the presence of her aunt, a worldly and cynical Communist Party insider, who shocks her with the declaration that her real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation. This revelation triggers a heart-wrenching journey into the countryside, to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past, evoking the troubling legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism.
Powerfully written and eloquently shot, IDA is a masterly evocation of a time, a dilemma, and a defining historical moment; IDA is also personal, intimate, and human. This intersection of the personal with momentous historic events makes for what is surely one of the most powerful and affecting films of the year.
IDA returns to Toronto and plays Mount Pleasant Cinema and Kingsway Theatre starting Friday February 27, 2015.
The film returns to Vancouver and plays The Vancity on March 9 and 12, 2015.