Directed by Andrzej Wajda • 1962 • Yugoslavia
This rarely-screened gem, produced in Yugoslavia, is one of Andrzej Wajda’s more singular films. Adapting Nikolai Leskov’s nineteenth-century novella about adultery and murder, and incorporating Dmitry Shostakovich’s riveting opera on the same source material, Wajda concocts a Polish-Russian-Yugoslav blend of noir and western. Olivera Marković stars as Katerina Izmailova, an unhappily married woman whose attraction to a carefree swineherd (Ljuba Tadić) sets in motion a chain reaction of crime and punishment. An acidic chamber piece, Siberian Lady Macbeth marks a turning point in Wajda’s filmmaking between his breakout hits and the grand historical sweep of his mature career.
SIBERIAN LADY MACBETH • SIBIRSKA LEDI MAGBET
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Written by Sveta Lukić
From the novel Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov
Cinematography by Aleksandar Sekulović
Music by Dušan Radić
Starring: Olivera Marković, Ljuba Tadić
In Serbian with English subtitles
Up Next in 100 years of Andrzej Wajda: literature on film
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The Promised Land
Directed by Andrzej Wajda • 1975 • Poland
Adapted from the classic novel by Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont, Andrzej Wajda’s The Promised Land is a stunning period epic about Poland’s painful transition to industrial modernity. In late nineteenth-century Łódź, three friends – one Polis...
