Weekend with Wajda: Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru) – 1977

In 1976, ambitious young film student Agnieszka is determined to make her diploma film about Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a national hero in the early 1950s. During the construction of the new socialist city of Nowa Huta, Birkut and his team set extraordinary bricklaying records and were turned into a propaganda icon — complete with newsreels, statues, and official celebrations. As Agnieszka digs deeper, interviewing people who knew him and uncovering suppressed archival footage, she discovers the darker truth. Birkut was a genuine idealist who believed in the workers’ cause. After an accident permanently damaged his hands and he defended a colleague falsely accused of sabotage, he fell out of favour with the authorities, was imprisoned, and gradually erased from official history. Agnieszka’s investigation increasingly unsettles the Party officials who control film production. They try to stop her project, but she continues. Eventually she tracks down Birkut’s son, Maciej, a young worker at the Gdańsk Shipyard.