Wajda became interested in the visual arts when working as assistant to a restorer of old church paintings in Radom. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, then film directing at the Leon Schiller State Theatre and Film School at Łódź. His first three films, Pokolenie (1954; A Generation), Kanał (1957; Canal), and Popiół i diament (1958; Ashes and Diamonds), won prizes at international film festivals. They constituted a trilogy that dealt in symbolic imagery with sweeping social and political changes in Poland during the German occupation, the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and the immediate postwar years. The actor Zbigniew Cybulski became famous for his portrayal of the hero, a boy growing into manhood whose idealism survives the humiliation and defeat of the occupation and the deaths of friends and the girl he loves.

Wajda became increasingly concerned with the problems of youth in the contemporary world and with the conflicts inherent in the human situation in later films such as Lotna (1959), Wszystko na sprzedaż (1968; Everything for Sale), Ziemia obiecana (1974; The Promised Land), Czlowiek z marmuru (1977; Man of Marble), Bez znieczulenia (1978; Without Anesthetic, or Rough Treatment), Panny z Wilka (1979; The Young Girls of Wilko), Czlowiek z zelaza (1981; Man of Iron), and Danton (1982). The highly acclaimed Korczak (1990) is a true story of the final days of Henryk Goldszmit (better known by his pen name Janusz Korczak), a Jewish doctor, writer, and child advocate who refused to escape Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II in order to maintain his orphanage. Other films include Nastasja (1994); Pan Tadeusz (1999), which is based on Adam Mickiewicz (Mickiewicz, Adam)'s epic poem of the same name; Zemsta (2002; The Revenge), which starred Roman Polanski (Polanski, Roman); and Katyn (2007), about the Katyn Massacre in 1940. Wadja received an honorary Academy Award in 2000.