Hundreds mourn top filmmaker Andrzej Wajda in Poland

Hundreds of people mourning for Poland’s leading filmmaker Andrzej Wajda are paying their respect by passing in silence before an urn with Wajda’s ashes at a church in southern Poland ahead of his funeral. Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, foreign diplomats, actors and intellectuals attended the funeral Mass at the Dominican friars’ church in Krakow. Later Wajda will be laid to rest at the city’s historic Salwator Cemetery, where the movie director’s mother is buried.

Wajda died in a Warsaw hospital Oct 9 at the age of 90, just months after finishing “Afterimage,” Poland’s entry for a foreign language Academy Award. In 2000 he received an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar. On Tuesday, hundreds of people in Warsaw, where he lived, bid Wajda farewell in a special Mass. — AP

The urn with the ashes of Poland filmmaker Andrzej Wajda is set out during a farewell ceremony.

People pay their respects to late Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda attend a mourning Mass, in Krakow, Poland yesterday. — AP photos