The film will star Krystyna Janda, who achieved fame for her role in Man of Marble, a 1976 classic by Wajda. The director, who already holds an Oscar for lifetime achievement, is up for a second award in the foreign-language film category for Katyń. The winners will be announced Feb. 24.

Iwaszkiewicz was a poet, prose writer, playwright, essayist, and translator who was born in 1894 in what is now Ukraine and died in 1980 in Warsaw.

Wajda told the Polish Press Agency the film will be in two parts. The first half will be based on "Tatarak," with the second half based on texts by young Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk.