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| Afterimage, which is Poland's submission for this year's foreign language Oscar |
He once said: "We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be."
It was an idea that he carried into his films - including Katyn, Ashes And Diamonds and Man Of Iron - which frequently drew on the Communist history and wartime strife in Poland.
He was still working up until his death and his film Afterimage - about avant-garde artist Wladyslaw Strzeminski - was recently been selected as Poland’s foreign language Oscar submission. He has been nominated for the foreign language award four times before and he received an honorary Oscar "for five decades of extraordinary film direction" in 2000.
The former Polish prime minister and the current head of the European Council, Donald Tusk, tweeted: "We all stem from Wajda. We looked at Poland and at ourselves through him. And we understood better. Now it will be more difficult."
Born in 1926, his father was one of the Polish army officers killed by Soviet troops in the Katyn massacre. He joined the Polish resistance in the Second World War and finally turned his hand to film directing with Generation in 1955. Due to his political opposition to communist leader general Wojciech Jaruzelskiin Poland, Wajda also spent time in France, where he made films, including Gerard Depardieu starrer Danton.
After the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, he returned home and, following the country's first free elections the next year, served as a senator for two years.
Wajda is survived by his fourth wife, actress and stage designer Krystyna Zachwatowicz, and actress Karolina, his daughter from his marriage to Beata Tyszkiewicz.
