The Problem of Lustration in Polish Cinema

Abstract

The relevance of this study is determined by the enduring impact of lustration on collective memory and cultural self-reflection in post-communist Poland. Despite the formal completion of key legislative stages, lustration continues to function as a source of moral, psychological, and symbolic tension within Polish society, which is actively articulated through national cinema. The research problem lies in the insufficient scholarly attention paid to the representation of lustration in Polish feature cinema as an autonomous cultural discourse. While lustration has been extensively examined from legal, political, and historical perspectives, its cinematic interpretation as a medium of meaning-making and trauma processing remains underexplored. The novelty of the study consists in its interdisciplinary approach, which conceptualises lustration not merely as an institutional mechanism but as a culturally mediated process articulated through cinematic narratives. The article introduces a conceptual analysis of key cinematic constructs—teczki (files), kłamstwo (lie), zdrada (betrayal), and the figure of the “evil UB officer but a good cop”—and traces their diachronic development in Polish films from the early 1990s to the mid-2020s. The subject of the study is the cinematic discourse on lustration in Polish feature films. The object of the study is Polish feature cinema produced after 1989 that directly or indirectly addresses the problem of lustration and the legacy of the communist security services. The study aims to identify and analyse the key conceptual frameworks through which the processes of lustration are represented and interpreted in Polish feature cinema. The study employs a combination of general scientific methods and specialised cultural-analytical approaches, including discourse analysis, narrative and semiotic analysis, comparative and historical-cultural methods, and the concept of cultural trauma. The study refers to the works of scholars in the fields of transitional justice, memory studies, and post-communist transformation, including Roman David, Lavinia Stan, Michael Nalepa, Cynthia Horne, Natalia Letki, Piotr Grzelak, Jan Woleński, and Nataliya Minyenkova. The article analyses a corpus of Polish feature films produced after 1989 and demonstrates that cinema constructs a distinct cultural language for engaging with lustration, shifting attention from legal procedures to moral ambiguity, personal responsibility, and collective trauma. The findings reveal the stability of key cinematic concepts across different historical periods and highlight cinema’s role in shaping reflective rather than punitive attitudes towards the communist past. The study concludes that Polish feature cinema functions as a significant space for the cultural interpretation of lustration, contributing to ongoing processes of memory formation and ethical reflection in post-communist society.