What has the ash hidden from us? Inside and around Andrzej Wajda's film

Spring of forty-five — a contradictory and tragic time in the history of Poland. The long-awaited peace was overshadowed by fear of the emergence of a new dictatorship, and many fighters of the anti-Hitler underground went underground against the Soviet regime, but the war with the new order took on the features of a civil war: Poles shot at Poles. Thirteen years later, during the thaw and the easing of censorship, an outstanding Polish film about these events — "Ashes and Diamonds" by Andrzej Wajda — was released on screens.

On the centenary of the director's birth, journalist Ivan Belyaev wrote a guide to this recognized masterpiece of world cinema, admired by Andrei Tarkovsky and Francis Ford Coppola. Working at the intersection of film studies and history, the author weaves together a story about the film itself, the time of its action, and the era of its creation.