Film review: Ida (12A, 82 mins)

Polish-born British director Pawel Pawlikowski, who won a BAFTA for My Summer Of Love, films in his homeland for the first time in this emotional 1960s-set drama.

Eighteen-year-old orphan Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) has been raised in a convent and devoted her life to God under the watchful gaze of the Mother Superior (Halina Skoczynska).

As Anna prepares to become a nun, Mother Superior insists the young woman reconnect with her past by visiting her sole living relative.

So Anna abandons the safety of the convent and travels to meet her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a cynical Communist Party insider, who discloses that Anna’s real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation.

Devastated, Anna embarks on a heart-wrenching journey back to her family’s house in the countryside to unlock the secrets of her tragic past.

Drama