The second work in Wajda’s celebrated trilogy of films focusing on the impact of World War II on a generation of young Poles, Kanal takes place during the "Warsaw Rising" in the summer of 1944. The film follows three groups of Home Army fighters who go underground—literally, through the city sewers—in an attempt to link up with their main forces. Commentary in the film’s prologue chillingly foreshadows the decidedly Dantean complications the narrative will assume as it introduces us to each of the characters and then informs us that "these are the last hours of their lives." Critically acclaimed at Cannes, where Wajda earned the Silver Palm, this elaborately staged work proved controversial on the home front by intimating, through the futility of each episode, that the loss of life had been meaningless. Nevertheless, for Wajda, Kanal and its successor, Ashes and Diamonds, "spoke for a country that was just beginning to exist on the map of the film world."