The Promised Land
Period Pieces: historical dramas for the modern world
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2h 42m
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 Polish, one Jewish, one German – unite to build their fortune amidst the city’s bustling textile factories. Capturing Reymont’s realist prose in vivid panoramas, Wajda plunges us into a world in which faith, family, and tradition are cast aside in the pursuit of power. Once voted the greatest Polish film of all time, The Promised Land is an unflinching examination of moral decay and masculine anxiety, as well as a portrait of Poland’s lost multicultural past.
THE PROMISED LAND • ZIEMIA OBIECANA
Written and directed by Andrzej Wajda
From the novel by Władysław Reymont
Cinematography by Wacław Dybowski, Edward Kłosiński, Witold Sobociński
Music by Wojciech Kilar
Starring: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn
In Polish with English subtitles
Nominated for the 1975 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
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