The death of Andrzej Wajda is a reminder of the excellence of his art but most of all of the importance of the humane values he did so much to embody and illuminate through some of the most terrible years in European history. As a Pole in the middle of the 20th century he suffered under both of the great dictatorships. His father was murdered by Stalin’s secret police in the Katyn massacre in 1940, along with 22,000 other Polish officer and civilian prisoners; around 6 million of his countrymen, half of them Jews, died in the second world war; he lived most of his adult life in a dictatorship.

Yet his most famous films portray freedom, responsibility and love growing back in these ghastly surroundings, like rosebay willowherb recolonising a bomb site. He stood for an artistic and moral integrity, and a courage and resilience, which allowed Europe to survive convulsions and invasions much worse than any which now threaten it. At a time when squalid little populisms flourish all over the continent, his life and work are a reminder that humanity is bigger and better than many of the dreams we choose to follow, and that we can always choose better.

• This article was amended on 13 October 2016. An earlier version said 4,700 Polish officer prisoners were murdered by Stalin’s army at Katyn in 1940. About 22,000 Polish soldiers and civilians died in the Katyn massacre, which was carried out by Stalin’s secret police.