Polanski's film of Władysław Szpilman's memoir, written in 1945 and published in 1946, then suppressed for decades and reissued in 1998. Polanski turned down Schindler's List and made this instead, and the reason is the adaptation's centre: he survived the Kraków ghetto as a child and wanted a film from inside the experience rather than about a rescuer. That is why the film refuses almost every consolation, and why Hosenfeld, the German officer who feeds Szpilman, is given no speech explaining himself. Palme d'Or, and Oscars for Polanski, Brody and the screenplay.