Polish freedom icon Lech Walesa Monday hailed legendary film director Andrzej Wajda as "a great man, a great Pole" after he died aged 90, leaving behind a series of acclaimed movies inspired by his country's turbulent history.

Wajda's first films were marked by the painful experience of World War II and the Polish resistance against the Nazis, who occupied the country for almost six years.

"A great man, a great Pole, a great patriot has passed," Nobel Peace Prize laureate Walesa told AFP Monday, hailing his "great wisdom".

Then leader of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union, Walesa appeared in Wajda's anti-regime film "Czlowiek z Zelaza" ("Man of Iron"), which in 1981 won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

"We've all been shaped by Wajda. We saw Poland and ourselves through him," tweeted EU President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and Solidarity dissident.

"We understood ourselves better. Now it will be more difficult." 

Wajda's death on Sunday was confirmed to AFP by a family friend, who said Wajda had died in a Warsaw hospital of lung failure after being being in a medically-induced coma for days.

Born on March 6, 1926 in Suwalki, northeast Poland, Wajda tried to follow in his father's footsteps and become a soldier, but was rejected from a military academy in 1939. He later attended Poland's renowned Lodz film school.

His first feature-length film, "Pokolenie" ("A Generation", 1955), a coming-of-age story of young Poles in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, is considered the debut of a "Polish school of cinema" which delves into heroism and romanticism.

In 1957, Wajda won the Jury Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for "Kanal" ("Canal"), his masterpiece on the doomed 1944 Warsaw Uprising by Polish partisans against the Nazis. 

"That was the beginning of everything," Wajda told AFP during a 2007 interview.

- 'Prize for Solidarity' -

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

It was followed three years later by "Man of Iron", focused on the rise of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union.

That won the 1981 Cannes Palme d'Or, 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 previously told AFP.

The Palme d'Or saved Wajda from internment by the communist regime during its December 1981 martial law crackdown, an episode which saw many of Wajda's friends and acquaintances imprisoned -- including Solidarity leader Walesa.

Wajda's opposition to the regime drove him to make films abroad, including "Danton" (1983) in France, starring Gerard Depardieu. "Eine Liebe in Deutschland" ("A Love in Germany", 1986) followed in Germany. 

Wajda's rendering of Russian writers Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Possessed" (1998) was also filmed in France.

After the collapse of communism in Poland in 1989, Wajda returned to his country's wartime history, focusing on stories suppressed by the communists. "Korczak" (1990) details the fate of Janusz Korczak, a pre-war Polish-Jewish children's author and physician who died in the Holocaust.

Another film, "Katyn", nominated for an Oscar in 2008, tells the tragic story of Wajda's own father during World War II.

Jakub Wajda was one of 22,500 Polish officers massacred by the Soviets in 1940 in the Katyn forest. A captain of an infantry regiment, he was shot in the back of the head by the Soviets' dreaded NKVD secret police.

Wajda continued working into his latter years, premiering his most recent film, "Powidoki" (Afterimage), in September at the Toronto Film Festival. 

Set in Stalinist-era Poland, it focuses on the struggles of avant-garde artist Wladyslaw Strzeminski and will be Warsaw's Oscar entry for best foreign film this year.

Source: AFP