Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, director of Ida, which has been nominated for the Oscar for “Best Foreign Film” insists that the movie about a young nun who learns of her Jewish roots hidden during the Nazi era, is not a “Holocaust movie.”It’s all your fault, ” Pawlikowski told a reporter, according to the Fresno Bee, “Because of all this fuss and attention, suddenly it’s become hijacked for other purposes. It’s endless, empty talk and nobody actually pays attention to the film.”
Ida, which has grossed more than $3.7 million in the U.S. and is a hit in France, won best film in the European Film Awards and Best Foreign Language Film at Bafta has been given some criticism among its accolades. The Polish Anti-Defamation League said not enough emphasis was placed on the German occupation during the war, and demanded the film have subtitles describing in more detail the historical context, according to the Guardian. In addition, one character was said to have demonstrated, “vulgar anti-semitic tropes.”
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On Skype, Pawlikowski told the Guardian that he “wanted to make a film that was in dialogue with Poland of the early 1960s–not just cinema, but novels, music, theater, the whole attitude of the period, which I love. It’s about my parent’s generation.” He blames criticism on the fact a “right wing Poland that’s off its head and generates this feeling that we’re being besieged, under some permanent struggle–completely ignoring the reality of Poland.”
