[3] Among the most important topics were the generation of former Home Army soldiers and their role in post-war Poland and the national tragedies like the German concentration camps and the Warsaw Uprising.
This marked the major difference between the members of the Polish Film School and Italian neorealists.
[4] The Polish Film School was the first to underline the national character of Poles and one of the first artistic movements in Central Europe to openly oppose the official guidelines of Socialist realism.
[5] The members of the movement tend to underline the role of individual as opposed to collectivity.
There were two trends within the movement: young directors such as Andrzej Wajda generally studied the idea of heroism, while another group (the most notable being Andrzej Munk) analyzed the Polish character via irony, humor, and dissection of national myths.