Veteran Polish director Andrzej Wajda has begunshooting of his long-cherished project PostMortem about the Katyn massacre of 1940 at locations near Krakow.

The $5.2m (Zloty 16m) Polish-French co-production byAkson Studio with Margaret Menegoz's Les Films du Losange as minority partnerhas received $1.9m (Zloty 6m) backing from the Polish Film Institute, $564,884(Euros 450,000) from Eurimages and has Polish public broadcaster TVPonboard as co-producer.

The cast of leading Polish actors includes Andrzej Chyra(who was the lead in Feliks Falk's award-winning The Collector last year), Stanislawa Celinska, Maja Ostazewska,Artur Zmijewski, Magdalena Cielecka and Wiktoria Gasiewska.

Akson had previously made the The Revenge with Wajda in 2001 and was a co-producer with AppleFilm last year of the omnibus film SolidaritySolidarity which gathered 13 Polish filmmakers including Wajda to mark the25th anniversary of the Solidarity movement.

Thescreenplay for Post Mortem has beenwritten by Andrzej Mularczyk and the film is being shot by internationallyrecognised Polish DoP Pawel Edelman (ThePianist).

The story of the murder of 22,000 Polish offices inthe woods near Katyn, Russia, and Kharkhov, Ukraine is a particularly poignant and personal one for Wajda since his father,a captain in the 72nd Infantry Regiment, was one of the victims of themassacre. Until 1989, Wajda's family was not allowed to make an inscription onhis father's tomb to say that how he had met his death at the age of 40.

Moreover, it was not until April 1990 that the thenPresident Mikhail Gorbachev admitted responsibility of the Soviet Union for Katyn.

Post Mortem is scheduled to completedfor theatrical release in Poland in autumn 2007.

Topics