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| Agata Trzebuchowska stars as Ida in "Ida" |
The 2014 Atlanta Jewish Film Festival has drawn to a close,
but the films it featured press on. Enter “Ida,” director Pawel Pawlikowski’s career's first foray into his native Poland. Filmed in a black-and-white square
aspect ratio, Pawlikowski’s screenplay is nearly upstaged by Lukasz Zal's and Ryszard Lenczewski's striking
visual direction, which is beautifully upstaged by newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska. At
first she plays Anna—a young soon-to-be nun encouraged by the Mother to become acquainted with her only living relative, Aunt Wanda
(Agata Kulesza).
Wanda wastes no time imparting life-changing truth: Anna is
not Anna at all. Her name is Ida. And Ida is not Catholic, but Jewish. Her
parents were murdered during WWII. Ida has questions, but Wanda doesn’t have
all the answers. The two take a trip across Poland on a search for the rest.
What they find pulls not only Ida’s but Wanda’s identity into question, and the
results threaten to be more than either can handle.
