Man of Iron

Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981) is Andrzej Wajda's historical drama, free to watch online and built straight from the headlines of Poland's Solidarity movement. The Communist Party sends a jaded radio reporter, Winkel, to Gdańsk with a dirty job: smear one of the shipyard strike's leaders.

His target is Maciek Tomczyk, whose father died during the worker protests of December 1970. Winkel plays the sympathetic listener, circling Tomczyk's friends and his detained wife Agnieszka — and the closer he gets, the harder it becomes to stay on the side that hired him. Jerzy Radziwiłowicz and Krystyna Janda carry the film's raw emotional charge.

Wajda shot this while the Lenin Shipyard strikes were still unfolding, folding real footage and real participants into the story. The result took the Palme d'Or at Cannes and beat the history books to the punch. If you want political cinema with no gloss and real stakes, start here. Stream Man of Iron (1981) online on iFILM.