Andrzej Wajda’s viscerally vivid adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner Wladyslaw Reymont’s late-19th-century novel is a ruthlessly clear-eyed anatomising of the industrial revolution from the perspective of three young entrepreneurs vying to be the most ruthless. One of the most outstanding and astonishing works by arguably the greatest of all Polish directors, ‘The Promised Land’ was voted the best film in the history of Polish cinema in 1996.

Restoration video