Poland produces about thirty-five feature films a year. Its motion picture industry is owned by the state, which finances production and distribution. It is supervised by the Polish Ministry of Culture and the central Party apparatus and organized into several studio units, usually headed by prominent film directors. Groups of writers and filmmakers are more or less permanently associated with these units.

Ryszard Bugajski’s new film, The Interrogation, was made in Andrzej Wajda’s famous film studio “X” and finished early this year, after a state of war had been imposed in Poland. Its subject is the Stalinist terror in Poland in the early Fifties. The Interrogation shows the plight of an innocent woman—played by Krystyna Janda (the leading actress in Wajda’s Man of Marble and Man of Iron)—caught in the wheels of the secret-police machine. It contains several drastic scenes of torture. These are unprecedented in East European cinema, which has, until now, treated this subject mostly by indirection.

In Poland the decision to release a film for public showing formally belongs to the deputy minister of culture in charge of the film industry. Controversial works like The Interrogation are often referred to higher authorities, primarily the Cultural Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In some cases even the Politburo may become involved. Nevertheless, customary forms and officially prescribed procedures are almost always observed.

In Poland, when a film has reached its final form it is presented to the deputy minister