A scene from Ida.
Polish-born writer-director Pawlikowski made his name in Britain with the terrific coming-of-age love story My Summer of Love and the heartfelt portrait of the loneliness of the immigrant, Last Resort.
His new film, set in his homeland in 1962, grapples with two eras in that country's past - the Holocaust
and post-war Stalinism - and achieves something quite remarkable. Rather than grimly trawling through the horrors of either age (they are observed only glancingly, and literally at the edge of the frame), he has created a small and perfectly formed portrait of personal self-discovery that reflects, rather than depicts, the political realities.
Anna (Trzebuchowska), a novice nun who has lived in a convent since infancy, is about to take the veil, when her Mother Superior instructs her to visit her only surviving relative, a previously unknown aunt called Wanda (Kulesza).
The latter turns out to be a judge, whose past as a former state prosecutor presiding over the show trials of the previous decade has left its mark. Now bitter and cynical, she deals with the corrosive legacy of her past with chain-smoking, heavy drinking and casual sex.
She is not exactly happy to see Anna and there is a kind of perverse cruelty in the way she delivers a bombshell about the young woman's past - the least of which is her real name, the title's Ida.
