Poland's leading filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, whose career manoeuvring between a repressive communist government and an audience yearning for freedom won him international recognition and an honorary Oscar, has died at the age of 90.
Wajda had recently been hospitalised and died on Sunday night, according to his colleague, film director Jacek Bromski.
Though physically frail, Wajda worked until the end of his life. His latest film, Afterimage, was chosen last month as Poland's official entry for an Oscar in the best foreign language film category.
Poland's Oscar Commission called the film, based on the life of Polish avant-garde artist Wladyslaw Strzeminski who was persecuted for refusing to follow the communist party line during the Stalinist era, a touching universal story about the destruction of an individual by a totalitarian system - a theme Wajda touched on throughout his lengthy career.
The film was also seen as yet another veiled political statement from Wajda - a declaration about artistic freedom at a time when Poland's current conservative government is interfering with the arts and media.
Wajda received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2000.
The director trod on ground controlled by communist-era censors with Man of Marble (1977), which looked at the roots of worker discontent in communist Poland in the 1950s; and Man of Iron (1981) on the rise of the Solidarity labour union movement, which eventually led to the demise of communism in Poland.
That movie featured Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who later became Poland's president. It won the Cannes Film Festival's top Palme d'Or prize in 1981 and was one of four Wajda movies to be nominated for the best foreign-language Oscar, although Poland's communist leaders unsuccessfully tried to withdraw it from Oscar consideration.
Under martial law in Poland in the early 1980s, Man of Iron was banned and shown only at private and church screenings.
Wajda once said that "my Polish films were always images of a fate in which I myself had also participated".
"We have lost someone who was larger than life," said actor and theatre director Jan Englert. "He was not only a great artist, but at the same a true authority."
Actor Daniel Olbrychski, who played in 13 of Wajda's movies, including The Promised Land and The Maids of Wilko, said he had never met another director who knew so well how to work with actors.
"We could feel the love of our audience through him. But when he frowned just a little, I knew I had to try and do it better."
Wajda made more than 40 films in all.
As well as directing movies, he also worked as a theatre director, saying that he was deeply drawn to the "transitory and ephemeral character of the theatre".
Wajda is survived by his fourth wife, actress and stage designer Krystyna Zachwatowicz, and his daughter, Karolina.
