His work became increasingly more political, and from 1981 to 1989 he sat on an advisory panel for the Solidarity movement. It was a stance that didn’t endear him to the authorities, and his production company was forced out of business. But success and international acclaim continued to follow him; ‘Man of Iron’ (featuring an appearance by Lech Wałęsa) won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and he continued knocking out the films in spite of government pressure. In 2000 he was awarded an honorary Oscar for his contribution to film; without a second thought he donated the award to Krakow’s Jagiellonian University Museum. Age hardly wearied Wajda; in his 80s he was once again nominated for an Oscar - this time for 2008's ‘Katyń’, an intense film about the massacre in which his father died, and released the biopic 'Wałesa: Man of Hope' in 2013. On the night of Sunday October 9th, 2016 Andrzej Wajda passed away in hospital of lung failure after being put into a medically induced coma. He died at the age of 90, only weeks after his final feature film 'Powidoki' was chosen to represent Poland for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
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