Wałesa: Man of Hope

Walesa: Man of Hope (Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei, 2013) is a Polish historical drama you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Andrzej Wajda, it traces Lech Wałęsa from the December 1970 crackdown at the Gdańsk shipyard — when troops fired on striking workers — to the day he addressed the U.S. Congress after Poland's communist government fell.

Robert Więckiewicz plays Wałęsa not as a statue but as a stubborn, combative, occasionally impossible man who refused every opportunity to stay quiet. Wajda — who spent his career filming the costs Poland paid through the twentieth century, from Ashes and Diamonds to Katyń — frames the Solidarity story through private scenes and domestic friction as much as public confrontations. The result is less a chronicle of events than a character study of an electrician who outlasted a government. Stream Walesa: Man of Hope on iFILM.