The way one interprets films about journeys into the past and discoveries of identity can largely depend on personal experience as much as on historical knowledge. Films enable us to reflect on self-origin, national history and images depicted in memory. However, while I perceive the film world as an authentic reality in itself, one might sometimes accuse it of misrepresentations or the false portrayal of a historical event.

In particular, Pawel Pawlikowski's 2013 film Ida was accused of being anti-Polish despite receiving an Oscar in the foreign language film category. Yes, Ida may focus on the dark chapter of German occupation in Poland during World War II, in which anti-semitism raged, but it also touches on important issues of identity and self-origin. Ida is both a story of discovering identity through the prism of the past and a cinematographic work that emotionally connects us to history, on both an individual and collective level. I can’t imagine anything more exciting.

The film mainly focuses on the value of human life and the discovery of identity. What shapes our identity? How does self-understanding influence the choices we make and paths we walk? The core idea of the film is conveyed through its cinematographic image, which relates to certain historical cases, explores the thinking of a personal background and connects to a narrative through the process of identification and imagination. Who am I? What connection do I have to the past? How does the knowledge of the past influence my relation to history?

Ida is set in Poland in the 1960s. Before taking her vows, a young novice, Anna, is going to visit her aunt Wanda, her only living relative. The first thing Anna discovers about her origin? Her aunt tells her that she is a Jew. This moment immediately made me reflect on how being Polish and being Catholic are interchangeably intertwined in public consciousness, creating a stereotype that necessarily associates the Polish with Catholicism. Something is evidently wrong with this notion, which limits the discovery of one’s true self and membership in any culture, society and the world at large. The film reveals that through the awareness of the alien, the other, one can begin to understand one’s own origins.

Moreover, the narrative of the film focuses on a person's instinctual interest to know more about one’s ancestors. Ida and her aunt’s decision to visit Ida’s parents’ grave is compounded by the difficult fate of Polish Jews during World War II. There were numerous pogroms enacted by the Polish at this time. In his book Neighbors, historian Jan Gross exposes one of the most shocking examples of this mass murder: the massacre of Jews in the village of Jedwabne by ordinary Polish people, their neighbors. However, from 1945 until almost the 21st century, this topic remained a taboo. The film expresses this fear of discovering the past and having to live with such unexpected findings. Wanda asks Ida: "What if you go there and you understand that there is no God?"

Pawlikowski confronts two opposite characters: Wanda, who is a strong-willed nihilist, and Ida, a girl without much personal experience beyond her life in the church. The story of Wanda is somehow more powerful and shocking. While she survived the war and entered society in its aftermath, her world was not born again in revolution. Her depiction in the film helped me visualize and experience the reality of a communist society.

I argue that this particular film requires somewhat deeper engagement to understand why it is not anti-Polish and why the idea of identity is so central. Even the way the film is shot — black and white, elegant minimalism, four by three format — creates the space for self-discovery. Also the fact that Ida is usually not in center of a frame means that if she escapes, her feelings and thoughts remain a mystery, and that her behavior is unpredictable until the final scenes. While the Jewish theme runs like a red thread through the film, it is not rational to suspect Ida in absentia. Pawlikowski has complained about critics who see the movie solely as a meditation on the Holocaust or Poland. He emphasizes that his film is not about guilt, it is about Christian, biblical forgiveness. He does not want to condemn anyone.

Furthermore, Ida also raises the concern of how one lives with the past and understands what to do with such knowledge, whether it can change us completely. Thus, in a larger context, the film emphasizes human interest in the past as a way to enter the future and make distinct choices in life.

Re-watching Ida a few times connects the first impression, historical context and cinematographic aspects of the film. I think it is a great example of how a modern audience across the world can digest a cinematographic work about a personal matter. Questions of identity, family history, future and faith will always arise, especially with regards to events vanished by time. What comes of this is the ability to find a way of living after such knowledge; a man should find a way to deal with his fear of the past’s influence. This kind of film, though very specific to a historical context, has boundless room for the personal interpretation and universal contemplation of one’s journey into the past and its impact on future choices.