Acclaimed Polish film director Andrzej Wajda dies aged 90

Reports in Poland said he died in hospital of lung failure after being put into a medically induced coma in recent days.

Wajda, who was awarded an Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2000, became a filmmaker only after being rejected by the army in 1939.

He attended Poland's renowned Łódź film school after the second world war. His career took flight after winning the jury special prize at the Cannes film festival in 1957 for Kanał (Canal), about the doomed 1944 Warsaw uprising by Polish partisans against the Nazis.

The award allowed Wajda to make his next film, Popiół i Diament (Ashes and Diamonds) in 1958 and cemented his position in Polish film.

In the 1970s Wajda turned to Polish literature for inspiration for Brzezina (Birch Wood, 1970), Wesele (The Wedding) two years later and Ziemia Obiecana (The Promised Land) in 1974.

At the 1977 Cannes festival, he screened Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble), a film critical of communist Poland.

It was followed three years later by Człowiek z zelaza (Man of Iron), focused on the rise of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union. That film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1981, even as Poland's then-communist regime cracked down on Solidarity and imposed martial law.

"The day of the Palme was a very important day in my life, of course. But I was aware that this prize wasn't just for me. It was also a prize for the Solidarity union," Wajda said in an interview in 2007.

The filmmaker donated the prestigious award to a Kraków museum, where it remains on display next to his other prizes, including the lifetime achievement Oscar.

The 1981 Palme d'Or saved Wajda from being jailed by the communist regime - a fate that befell many of the director's friends and colleagues - including Solidarity's leader, Lech Wałęsa.

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