Ashes and Diamonds (Polish: Popiół i diament) is a 1958 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda, based on the 1948 novel by Polish writer Jerzy Andrzejewski. It completed Wajda's war films trilogy, following A Generation (1954) and Kanal (1956). The title comes from a 19th-century poem by Cyprian Norwid and references the manner in which diamonds are formed from heat and pressure acting upon coal.
Ashes and Diamonds is considered by film critics to be one of the great masterpieces of Polish cinema and arguably the finest Polish realist film. Martin Scorsese has cited the film as one of his favourites.Synopsis
In an unnamed small Polish town on May 8, 1945, the day Germany officially surrendered, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) and Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski) are Home Army soldiers who have been assigned to assassinate the communist Commissar Szczuka (Wacław Zastrzeżyński), but fail in their first attempt to ambush him, killing two civilian cement plant workers instead. They are given a second chance in the town's leading hotel and banquet hall, Monopol.
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