About the festival

Independent creator, screenwriter and director, composer of theater and film music.
He has made over one hundred and twenty films in Poland and abroad: educational / feature (short  films), documentaries, fictionalized documents, full-length features. Author of unique and spectacular works such as composing and directing the “Cracovia est” oratorio – the main point of the celebrations of the 750th anniversary of the foundation of the City of Krakow under the Magdeburg Law. His recently completed full-length feature “The Guardian” is currently in post-production.

The conqueror of numerous awards, including:

• Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the category: artistic achievements-director, for the year 2020
• Golden Copernicus at EDUKINO festival in 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020
• Grand Prix at the Mundi 2017 International Film Festival: “History hidden in Chocolate”
• 1st prize at XXXI International Film Festival i Multimedia Niepokalanów 2016 in the category: feature film for the film “God in Krakow”
• 1st prize at XXX International Film Festival i Multimedia Niepokalanów 2015 in the category: feature film for the film “Karolina”
• Award of the Chairman of the Jury of the XIV International Film Festival i Multimedia Niepokalanów 1999, for the script and directing the film “Daddy, I Need You”.

Director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker. Author – director and screenwriter – of the first screening of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Saga, the film and series The Witcher (2001), a story that is the basis of the most popular Polish video game …

A friend and longtime associate of Andrzej Wajda. He collaborated as a second director with a number of Polish and foreign directors: Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polański, Krzysztof Zanussi, Volker Schloendorff, Steven Spielberg, Marek Koterski, and Costa-Gavras. With Steven Spielberg collaborated on the film Schindler’s List (1993). He was also the second director of The Drama of Dresden (2005), which won Emmy Award.

He is the director and screenwriter of the series of educational films History in animated pictures, for which he was awarded the Golden Copernicus three times.

The educational cycle Jan Matejko – History in animated pictures is an attempt to present the key moments of Polish history in the form of cinematically “animated” pictures by Jan Matejko.

Poland Independent is the second installment of the series, which consists of ten screen adaptations of selected paintings and graphics, depicting events and characters related to Poland’s efforts to regain independence. The viewer can hear their conversations, as well as get to know the historical context of Poland just before the moment when all heroes froze, locked in a cage of time and in the frame of a painterly work.

British editor of documentaries and drama for Film and TV. Has been editing for over twenty years, working on a wide variety of genres, such as documentaries, current affairs, drama, arts, wildlife, observational, science, food, rig shows, property, history, sports, education, American networks.

• Nominated for three Emmy awards 2021 and winner of the Emmy award “Outstanding Video Journalism: News” for Taliban Country, Frontline PBS
• Nominated Rory Peck Awards 2020 and One World Media awards 2020 for The Bullet and the Virus, BBC.
• Nominated for Current Affairs – Home RTS awards 2017 for Exposure: Abused and betrayed- a life sentence ITV1
• Winner of 2015 Rory Peck – Sony Impact Award for Current Affairs and of 2015 Best Documentary Award at UNAFF for Pakistan’s Hidden Shame. C4 True Stories.
• Winner of Wincott Award For Television 2015 for Exposure: Fashion Factories Undercover. ITV1

• Nominated for Current Affairs- Home RTS awards 2013 and winner of 2013 Emmy Award for Best International Current Affairs for Banaz: A Love Story. ITV
• Winner of Best Specialist Factual BAFTA awards 2010, Best Science & Natural History, RTS awards 2009, and Best Popular Factual, Broadcast awards 2010 for Inside Nature’s Giants – Whale C4
• Winner of 2003 George Polk award for Television Reporting for CUTTING EDGE. The Child Sex Trade C4
• Winner of 2003 Wincott Awards for Business Journalism for The Money Programme Including Mortgage Madness.
• Winner of 2002 IMZ Dance Screen award for The Dancer’s Body. BBC Arts.
• Winner of a RTS Educational Television Awards 2008 for Syria: Refugee Lives-Iraqi Children Speak
• Winner of Golden Copernicus at Educational Films Festival EDUKINO 2021 for the film Water Game