Her stories are founded in stories of human life and joy in the midst of tragedy and disaster, of the world of man under the hand of God and all the unexpected pains and pleasures of existence. Agnieszka Holland's films address complex questions. In spite of the fact that the subject of the Holocaust has been tackled by several different directors in numerous genres, the award-winning director has strived to devise an original take on the Holocaust. In Darkness portrays the morally complex characters of the participants of the Holocausts, a smalltime Polish crook, Leopold Socha becomes a hero saving Jews from the Holocaust. Burning Bush, the HBO miniseries is the true story of a student who sacrificed his life in Prague in January 1969 in the name of the fight against the communist regime.
Film and theatre director, born in 1948, Holland was nominated for the Oscar in 1985 for Angry Harvest, in 1990 for Europa, Europa and 2012 for In Darkness. Holland graduated from the Prague Film School FAMU. As a scriptwriter she is the author of the script to some of her own movies and to the films of Krzysztof Zanussi, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski. In 1982 she played the role of the prosoner in Ryszard Bugajski's Interrogation. In 2013 Holland is working on bringing Olga Tokarczuk’s 2009 novel Drive Your Plough Through the Bones of the Dead, a moral thriller that addresses the issue of human treatment of animals, to the big screen.
The Prague exhibition is composed of photographs from film sets from Holland's archives, material lent by Andrzej Wajda, Zebra Film Studio, Tor, Best Film and film institutions from Frankfurt, Londyn, Berlin and Prague.
After Karlove Vary, Febiofest is considered the Czech Republic's biggest and most prestigious film festival. Set up in 1993, today the events attracts some 140 thousand people. The festival jury is composed of experts and ordinary viewers.
Poland. Europe. World - the Many faces of Agnieszka Holland has been organised by the Museum of Cinematography of Lodz. After Prague, the exhibition travels to Toronto, Budapest, Bratislava and London.
Sources: PAP, culture.pl
Editor: MJ