Poklosie

Unfortunately this movie was used as propaganda tool from two opposite sides. I'd recommend not to seek any relationship to any facts as you won't find any. Simply enjoy the movie for what was created - an artistic value with universal message.

I was not aware of Poland banning this movie. As a matter of fact there were some Poles (too many) that sold out Jews to Germans. There were many (too many)Poles executed along with the whole family for hiding Jews.

In Yad Vashem majority of trees, symbolizing those who saved Jews, have Polish names. As a matter of fact most of these trees symbolize Polish families. It should be many, many more, but some Poles decided to take an award from God, never from people.

My father was risking his life by smuggling grain in a street car passing through ghetto. The bags were hidden in the motor compartment and at some secluded spots he was ripping these bags open. Little kids were swarming around grain and quickly filling their cans. For them it was the only meal the whole family could have. I don't think he ever heard "thank you" for doing it, however he enjoyed living the life of a decent man.

This is a very good movie. Deeply tragic, terribly honest, unbearably truthful, impossibly merciless. he very topic of Holocaust has been closely watched, studied and discussed, but here we do not have the scale of Spielberg's Schindler's List, or bare wound of Polanski's Pianist. Here we see a minor case, nevertheless, not a bit less painful or decent. The story of two Kalina brothers in a small Polish village (which is shown so vividly and so exact) seems to be a bit slow at first, but then the tempo of the film gets faster, the events get more and more tragic, and people become more and more horrible. This is a fictitious village, but the story itself is of Jedwabne origin, with local population taking part in killing all local Jews just to be commended by Nazis. The very fact that the movie was prohibited in some Polish Gminy (regions), and harshly attacked by nationalists shows how very true it is and how precisely it hit the tee. Ireneusz Czop as Franciszek Kalina, Maciej Stuhr as Józef Kalina, brother of Franciszek, Jerzy Radziwiłowicz as the rector, Zuzana Fialová as Justyna, granddaughter of Sudecki, Andrzej Mastalerz as Janusz Pawlak, Zbigniew Zamachowski as police Sgt. Włodzimierz Nowak, Danuta Szaflarska as the elderly herbalist

• all these actors did a marvelous and very deep performance, and the very core of the problem is shown extremely well. Thye final discovery is so tragic for Kalina Brothers, so bad, so terrible to know, that one of them cannot bear the truth anymore, and the other does what he really has to. The final scene with Jewsish relatives of murdered locals is deeply sad, touching, and really great. I highly recommend this excellent film and commend it 10 out of 10. This is a superb work of Wladyslaw Pasikowski - he did his real best.

There were 5-6 MILLION Jews killed in the Holocaust. So the one reviewer saying "This movie's theme has been done to death. If you've seen one third Reich movie you've seen them all more or less." and it has been "82 years since this happened...five movies per year done" about this horrible near-extermination. Are you kidding me? If you took only 5,000,000 Jewish lives and divided it by 82 years that would be 60,000+ thousand movies that NEED to be made per year about any and all horrific acts these monsters caused.

My review about this movie...it's not a thriller. It's a puzzle. It's an in-depth thought provoking movie that every person alive needs to see. Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905) "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I had no idea this happened in many cities and villages throughout Europe and beyond. IF these stories are not told, even on the simplest terms, our children and future generations are condemned to repeat it. The movie may be a slow go but it is a well acted and well written movie with a haunting soundtrack.

God help the souls who choose to forget the past. We have a very real evil living among us and this could certainly happen again, at any moment.

It is said that history cannot be buried under the ground. It always comes out of its own accord in the future to talk about the past. This is something which viewers witness in "Aftermath" which has been set as a fast paced thriller. The story is told through the turbulent lives of two brothers Franek and Jozek who experience how their peaceful life in a small polish village is completely transformed once they come across some horrible secrets involving murders of their Jewish neighbors during second world war. Pasikowski's film succeeds from the beginning as it fights against a lot of clichés. Firstly, it is absolutely harsh against the belief that let the secrets remained buried as it would be in the interest of everybody if their currently status quo is maintained and not disturbed in future. This is not something which Kalina brothers are willing to accept readily as it was not on their minds to let the secrets be buried. They were fully aware of consequences they would have to face if they went ahead with their scheme of unearthing secrets. In this manner, Kalina brothers-Franek and Jozef make it explicitly clear that truth must come out regardless of the anguish and pain it might cause to anybody who is not able to digest it. Although the villagers are not shown in a negative light but director Pasikowski is upright when he shows that there is a lot of resentment in the minds of local people about its inhabitants who have left for USA. The role of church as depicted in this film is rather ambiguous as the local priest chose to remain neutral at a time when a lot could have been done by him to assuage sufferings. The religious angle gets prominence when the younger brother sacrifices himself in the same manner as Jesus Christ to atone for sins committed by his father. It is rather unfortunate that upon its release in Poland, Aftermath was embroiled into unnecessary controversy. One fail to understand what led some Polish people to accuse this film of being an anti Polish propaganda. Lastly, as freedom of expression is needed to understand the greatness of all works of art, it is hoped that the ban on "Aftermath" in some Polish cinemas would soon be lifted.

I have become increasingly interested in films and books that address the topic of Polish anti-Semitism. Initially, I approached the topic defensively. How, I wondered, did France and Italy get so conveniently off the hook in the post war years, when the capitulation and collaboration with the Nazis that occurred in those countries is indisputable? Poland's government was the only one that did not capitulate to the Nazis during World War II, and that is part of the reason Warsaw was reduced to rubble. Nazi punishment for Poles during the war was exceptionally harsh; whole families were put to death for harboring Jews.

"Aftermath," directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski, is another example of a new generation of Polish writers and artists coming to terms with a dark past. The film begins with the return of a man to his hometown after 20 years of living in Chicago. Something is clearly amiss. His brother has inexplicably begun unearthing Jewish gravestones that were used as paving blocks after the war. The neighbors are unaccountably hostile. The buried secrets concern the wartime fate of the local Jews who, contrary to official history, were not deported by the Nazi occupiers but massacred in a single day by their Gentile neighbors. Released in Poland in 2012, "Aftermath" reignited the controversy that surrounded the publication in 2000 of the book "Neighbors" by Jan T. Gross, a searing account of the covered-up slaughter in Jedwabne, a once half-Jewish village in northeastern Poland where hundreds of Jews, including children, were murdered in a savage pogrom in 1941.

In "Afternmath," Poles, accustomed to seeing themselves as victims during World War II, are confronted with an incident in which their countrymen had been victimizers. Nationalists were incensed. Others found this revelation evidence of a nation coming to terms with its disturbing past. Pasikowski saw the subject as material for a movie. "The film isn't an adaptation of the book, which is documented and factual, but the film did grow out of it, since it was the source of my knowledge and shame," he has said. "Aftermath," which is set around 2001, at the time of the Jedwabne debate (to which the film never explicitly refers) in the same rural region of northeast Poland, and draws not only on the book "Neighbors" but also the 1996 documentary "Shtetl," made by Marian Marzynski to create not a documentary but an impassioned plea for truth no matter how ugly.

Obsessed with the idea of rescuing the remnants of Jewish life, Pasikowski's protagonist, Jozef Kalina (Maciej Stuhr), is subjected to intense hostility. Jozef is ostracized by his neighbors. His wife, unable to withstand the pressure, leaves for Chicago. His older brother, Franciszek (Ireneusz Czop), who departed Poland on the eve of the 1981 declaration of martial law, returns to investigate and finds himself unwillingly drawn into his brother's mission, excavating the past with increasingly violent and ultimately devastating results.