Shortly after Poland was invaded by Germany in 1939, Hitler’s enemy, Josef Stalin, undertook the slaughter of of some 22,000 Polish officers, police, and civilian POWs in what amounted to an attempted liquidation of the nation’s intelligentsia. (By law, all Polish university graduates become reserve officers.) One of the murdered officers was the father of Andrej Wajda – now in his mid-eighties, a veteran member of the Solidarity labor movement and universally regarded as his country’s greatest director.

Wajda has spent his career dealing with the impact of both Nazi and Stalinist oppression on his homeland, but this is the first time he’s taken on the moment that must have started his lifelong commitment to justice and freedom. This complex, concise epic eventually takes the form of a sort of a mass murder anti-mystery as we follow numerous family members who must fight official lies, propaganda, and counter-propaganda to learn the fate of their loved ones and honor their memories. Though the large number of players can be somewhat confusing at times and Wajda’s style might seem somewhat oblique, this is an inevitably grim but compelling and deeply heartfelt reminder that both world wars and psychotic tyrants have far more victims than the world has memory. The brutal final moments of this film ensure that no one watching will forget this particularly massacre, however.

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