The director of "Ida," the Polish movie that won this year's Oscar for best foreign film, says Poles should see it before calling it anti-Polish.

"Ida" premiered in Poland in 2013, but attracted little attention despite winning best picture in Poland's main movie festival.

Now the Oscar and a slew of other international awards have generated intense debate about whether it's unpatriotic, a charge leveled by right-wing politicians.

The movie is about a young woman, preparing to be a nun, who discovers she is Jewish and that her parents were murdered during World War II.

Polish-British director Pawel Pawlikowski suggested during a meeting Monday with President Bronislaw Komorowski that not all those engaging in the debate had seen "Ida."

"I'd rather you saw the film," Pawlikowski said, "not debated it."