Merkel to attend Berlin premiere of Katyn massacre film

Feb 14, 2008, 15:51 GMT

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to attend the international premier of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's film Katyn, her office said Thursday.

The film, about the wartime massacre of thousands of Polish army officers and intellectuals by the Soviet secret service, is the final entry in the Berlin Film Festival that ends Sunday.

Merkel is to attend the Friday afternoon screening with her husband, the government press office said.

Katyn examines one of the darkest moments in Poland's history through the eyes of families who lost their relatives in the 1940 massacre in a forest near the town of Katyn.

The film has been nominated for an Oscar as best foreign language film in this year's Academy Awards that take place in Los Angeles at the end of the month.

In Berlin it is running out of competition, which means it is ineligible for the Golden Bear award for best film.

More than 3 million people have seen Wajda's film in Poland, where the subject of the massacre was taboo under decades of communist rule.

The Soviets denied any involvement and pinned the blame on the German wartime occupiers of Poland. Polish communist authorities accepted this version.

The cover-up was exposed in 1990, a year after the collapse of communism in Europe, when the Soviets released documents acknowledging the killings.