Wanda Jakubowska on AllMovie

Polish filmmaker Wanda Jakubowska has been creating movies for over 50 years, but her most significant contributions to cinema came from the years around World War II. Her 1946 film Ostatni Etap/The Last Stage, a chronicle of the relationships formed between female prisoners in Nazi concentration camps based on her experiences while interned in Auschwitz was the first Polish post-war film to gain international distribution; it was also only the second feature produced by the newly formed Film Polski, the state film board. Jakubowska was also a key figure in the founding of START (Stowarzyszenie Milosnikow Filmu Artystycznego/Society for Devotees of Artistic Film) in 1929. This organization attempted to promote the production of films about artistic and social committment.