Ida

Pawlikowski built up his reputation as a filmmaker in the UK, but with Ida he returns to his homeland in terms of subject, style and mentality. The film, situated in a black-and-white Poland in 1963, exudes the spirit of an almost-faded Eastern European film culture in its mood, irony, humanism and cynicism.
The naive novice Anna is about to enter a convent, but first has to contact her last surviving relative, a chain-smoking aunt who works as a judge. This conceited Wanda reveals that Anna’s real name is Ida and that she is Jewish. They set off together through desolate Poland in search of the truth about Anna’s family, and therefore also the past: World War II is not far behind them. In the meantime, the prospect of freedom appears in the person of a hitchhiking jazz musician who takes a fancy to Anna. Poland also had something like its own Prague Spring at that time.