Marcin Dorociński in Wojciech Smarzowski's "Rose", photo: press materials
At the International Film Festival of India in Goa, Polish actor Marcin Dorociński receives the Silver Peacock - the top prize for male roles, for his performance in Wojciech Smarzowski’s Rose.
In Wojciech Smarzowski’s award-winning film Rose, Marcin Dorociński is Tadeusz, a Polish soldier of the Home Army whose wife was raped and killed by a German soldier during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Tadeusz arrives in the Mazury region in summer 1945 in search of Rose, the wife of his dead friend Johann, to tell her about her husband’s fate, with a photograph and Johann’s wedding band. Emotional ties flourish between Tadeusz and Rose. The Silver Peacock award joins Dorociński's Best Actor prize at the Gdynia Film Festival in 2011 for his role, and the Best Actor award at Porto Film Festival in 2012.
The actor is known for his portrayals of conflicted, troubled characters. In Marcin Krzyształowicz’s Manhunt he is Wydra, a corporal in the Home Army, a Polish partisan who, as an executioner of Gestapo informants, must carry out a death sentence on a man who turns out to be his friend. Dorociński has been praised for that role by critics overseas. His is a "convincingly dour central performance", Neil Young writes in the Hollywood Reporter, adding that "Krzystalowicz can't quite craft a robust narrative framework worthy of Dorociński's quietly tragic, hard-bitten intensity".
Dorociński has received critical acclaim since the early 2000s, and received the Zbigniew Cybulski Award for Best Young Polish Actor in 2005. The Award is named for the star of classic Polish film including Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds (1958) and has been given to young actors since 1969. He received the Golden Lion Award at the Gdynia Film Festival in 2009 for best supporting actor for his role as Bronisław in Borys Lankosz’s Rewers / Reverse, in which he plays a mysterious, chivalrous man who turns out to be a secret police employee offering marriage in exchange for reports on a publishing-house director.
He received worldwide acclaim for his role in Magdalena Łazarkiewicz’s 13-episode TV series Głęboka Woda / The Deep End. He played the lead, a director of the social care with 15 years of experience, facing countless difficult situations and overcoming personal issues to support young, enthusiastic idealists who come to work at the centre. The series was awarded Best Series at the 64th Prix Italia TV Festival 2012 and brought Dorociński a nomination for Best Actor at the 52nd Monte Carlo Television Festival.
Dorociński has played in British productions: in the BBC’s The Spies of Warsaw, a drama set in Warsaw, Paris, London and Berlin in the years leading up to the Second World War. In the Channel 4 drama series Run, he played alongside Olivia Colman, Lennie James and Katie Leung appearing in the fourth episode as Peter, a Pole organising marriages of convenience among illegal immigrants.
The International Film Festival of India is one of the major film events on the Asian continent. Founded in 1952, it was held in Mumbai, then in Madras, Delhi and Calcutta. It has taken place in Goa since 2004 .
Sources: culture.pl, Cinema Without Borders, IFFI, Hollywood Reporter, Imdb
Editor: Marta Jazowska