The Pianist

For his most personal film, Roman Polanski returned to Poland for the first time in 40 years for a film shooting. THE PIANIST was created based on the memoirs of the Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, in which he describes how luck and the help of his admirers enabled him to survive in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Himself a child in the Krakow Ghetto, Polanski makes THE PIANIST a harrowing demonstration of how life and death came to depend on indiscriminate whims. There is no need for melodrama to accomplish that. Rather, it is the picture's sobriety that lends it its emotional impact. The film won the Golden Palm in Cannes and three Oscars.