With Kieslowski's death in 1996, the cinema lost one of the last great
European auteurs, ranked by many alongside Rossellini and Bresson.
Like them, the Polish director's approach is calm and restrained,
observing little details with a dispassionate eye, but the cumulative
effect can be devastating. He attracted attention with the Dekalog, a
series of ten short films on the Commandments, and cemented his
reputation with the grandest cinematic project of the 1990s: the Three
Colours films, on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. His style and
subject matter have been influential; film-makers from the Dardenne
brothers to Abbas Kiarostami cite him as an inspiration.
