Man of Marble
Not only is Andrzej Wajda’s award-winning Man of Marble one of the  most important films in the history of Polis cinema, it is also one of the most compelling  attacks on government corruption ever made. It is a Citizen Kane-styled story where  Wajda introduces us to a young woman in Krakow, Agnieszka, who is making her thesis  film. She is looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was  briefly elevated to the status of a communist hero. She wants to know how his heroism  was created and what became of him. She gets a hold of censored footage and interviews  with the man’s friends and ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero. A portrait  of Birkut emerges as a man who believed in the socialist ideals, the workers revolution,  and in building housing for all. However, the young filmmaker’s hard-driving style and  the content of her film unnerve her supervisor, who thinks it’s getting too close to a  political nerve. The film project is killed with the excuse she is over budget, but the  young filmmaker pushes forward against all odds to finish her film.