For close to three decades it seems that no film festival has been complete without a new film by Andrzej Wajda, Poland's greatest director and a film-maker with a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to renew his themes and styles. In recent years the rich historical tableau of Land of Promise was succeeded by the down to earth and honest examination of the uglier facets of socialism in Man of Marble, and now, in Rough Treatment, Wajda is preoccupied with contemporary people and the domestic chaos of their lives.

The new film concerns a middle-aged TV personality and journalist who returns home from yet another trip abroad to find that his wife is walking out on him. There is a lover involved, an abrasive young man whose political and cultural attitudes are diametrically opposed to the older man. The man must now face the protracted pain of a divorce against his will. A relentless flow of humiliations at home and office lead to disintegration.

Andrzej Wadja - Born 1926

Feature films — A Generation (1954), Kanal (1957), Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Lotna (1959), Innocent Sorcerers, Samson (1961), Ashes (1965), The Gates of Paradise (1967), Everything for Sale (1968), Hunting Flies (1969), Landscape After Battle, The Birchwood (1970), Land of Promise (1974), The Shadow Line (1976), Man of Marble (1977), Rough Treatment (1978), The Maids of Wilko (1979), The Conductor(1980).