The film of the Polish director Andrzej Wajda “Katyń” will be shown on the public TV channel Moldova 1 on September 17, starting a 8pm. The film will be broadcast to commemorate the start of the Soviet aggression on Poland in September 1939. It will be subtitled in Romanian and dubbed in Russian, IPN reports.

The Embassy of Poland in Chisinau said this film is based on real events. It tells about the arrest and killing of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals by the secret Soviet services and about the ordeal experienced by their families, who tried to find out what happened to them.

On September 17, 1939, in accordance with the additional secret protocol to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which envisioned the division of Poland between Germany and the USSR, the Red Army invaded the eastern part of this country. The Polish servicemen, who were mainly officers in reserve – the intellectual elite of the Polish people – were taken to camps. Considered by Moscow a potential nucleus of dangerous national elite, these were executed en mass in April and May 1940. For political reasons, this crime had been hidden until 1990.

“Katyń” received, among others, the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture and the European Film Award for the Best Costume Design. It was also nominated for the Oscar and won the Polish Eagle Prize for Best Cinematography in seven categories, including the Best Film one.

The film will be shown on Moldova 1 on the initiative and with the support of the Polish Institute of Bucharest. The showing will be preceded by a short introduction by Poland’s Ambassador to Moldova Artur Michalski and by vice director of the Polish Institute of Bucharest Leszek Biały.