"I have nothing, you have nothing, and he has nothing; that means together we have enough to start a factory," says an impoverished Polish nobleman-turned-industrialist to his Jewish and German partners. Set in Lodz at the end of the nineteenth century, Promised Land captures a unique moment in which ethnic differences took a back seat to the capitalist ambitions of a new class of "Lodzermensch." Working from a novel by Nobel laureate Stanislaw Reymont, Wajda shot the film on location in Lodz, where he had spent four years attending the famed film school—a city still dominated by the look of the past. While his lusciously photographed saga was nominated for an Academy Award, Wajda was subjected to critique from both the censors and the liberal media.