The Indian Dream: Polish Cinematographers in Bollywood
They shoot sensational blockbusters, sentimental melodramas, spectacular science fiction films and dark crime stories, winning the most prestigious awards and celebrating box office successes. But how did cinematographers from Poland become such an important part of Bollywood, the world’s largest film market?
For decades, Bollywood was hardly the object of Polish filmmakers’ desires. While most of them longed for the American dream factory and their achievements overseas were celebrated by the national media, Bollywood seemed too culturally distant to be a place where they could pursue their professional ambitions. Nor did stereotypes portraying Indian productions as kitschy, dance-filled melodramas, incompatible with the ambitions of European filmmaker-artists, help matters. However, the past decade has brought about a significant change, with Polish cinematographers now a common sight on Indian film sets, ushering in a new era of Polish–Indian cinematic relations.
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Artur Żurawski on the set of the film ‘Mardaani’, photo: https://www.arturzurawski.com
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Artur Żurawski was among those who paved the way for Polish cinematographers in Bollywood.
After graduating from Łódź Film School in 2011, he worked as a second cinematographer on the Indian blockbuster Azaan, which soon opened up doors to the Indian film industry. Three years later, he was on the set of Mardaani, Pradeep Sarkar’s feminist crime thriller, working as the director of photography.
While working on the film, he and the director decided to abandon the fairy tale aesthetic common in Bollywood in favour of creating a dark film about violence against women and a policewoman who confronts human traffickers. For Żurawski, encountering Bollywood was like colliding with a new reality. In an interview with Anna Wróblewska from Magazyn Filmowy, published by the Polish Filmmakers Association (SFP), the artist said:
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I heard that if a focus puller fails to get the focus right, he gets a ‘fatherly’ slap in the face, and no one takes offence. But I was white and from the West, which meant that I was trusted more. When I shook hands with the lighting technician to greet him before work, he seemed almost embarrassed that I was paying attention to him.
The fearless Żurawski quickly earned the respect of his colleagues on the set of the film Mardaani. In an interview with the Indian Express, the film’s director said:
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Coming from a foreign country, Artur brought a completely different way of perceiving and using light in film. ‘Mardaani’ is a dark and intense story, and his innovative use of lighting allowed us to achieve an extraordinary effect on screen.
It's no wonder that shortly after the film’s premiere, Żurawski began receiving more Bollywood offers. In 2016, he worked on Sultan, a big-budget sports drama starring Salman Khan in the lead role. A year later, he shot Omung Kumar’s Bhoomi.
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Still from the film ‘Fitoor’, directed by Abhishek Kapoor, photo: Film Polska Production / UTV Motion Pictures
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Żurawski’s Indian successes coincided with the Bollywood expansion into collaborations with Polish cinematographers. It was precisely in the middle of the previous decade that Polish cinematographers began to be in high demand on the sets of the Asian dream factory.
However, the fad for Polish cinematographers in Bollywood did not appear out of nowhere. The driving force behind the Poles’ success in India was Julia Piekiełko from Choice Talents. She is the only Polish agent specialising in connecting Bollywood producers with Polish (and other) filmmakers. She has enabled artists such as Arkadiusz Tomiak, Piotr Uznański and Marcin Łaskawiec to make their Indian debuts.
Piekiełko began her Asian adventure at Film Polska Production, a company that specialises in international co-productions and invites foreign productions to Poland. It’s thanks to them that the Tatra Mountains, Ogrodzieniec Castle and Poland’s cities have appeared on Bollywood screens. Poland has proven to be an interesting filming location for Indian producers. Examples include: Abhishek Kapoor’s Fitoor, a 2016 dance adaptation of Great Expectations, which was shot in locations including the Goetz Palace in Brzesko; Shree Narayan Singh’s 2012 film Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai; and Vivek Kumar’s 2014 romantic musical Rhythm, which featured the Wieliczka Salt Mine. One of the most well-known Indian films made in Poland is Kick, starring Salman Khan. Partly shot in Warsaw, it includes a scene featuring characters jumping from the upper floors of the Palace of Culture and Science, and the widely commented-on sequence of a bus falling off the Gdańsk Bridge into the Vistula River.
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Szymon Lenkowski on the set of the film ‘Bangistan’, photo: distributor’s press materials
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During their visits to Poland, Bollywood producers have not only appreciated the locations but also its Warsaw-based cinematographers. One of them was Szymon Lenkowski, who has worked as a cinematographer on films such as Mariusz Grzegorzek’s I Am Yours and Filip Marczewski’s Shameless. In 2015, he was the cinematographer for Karan Anshuman’s Bangistan, one of the most unconventional Bollywood films of the time. Its story about two clumsy terrorists (a Muslim and a Hindu) who are supposed to carry out a bomb attack during the World Religion Conference in Poland is told in the style of a slapstick comedy of errors, with Poland becoming one of the characters in the film.
Bangistan, which was partly shot in Kraków with Tomasz Karolak and Cezary Pazura in the cast, was not the only Bollywood production by Szymon Lenkowski. In 2024, the Polish cinematographer worked on Vandana Kataria’s Love, Sitara, a romantic story about a girl from Kerala and a man from Punjab.
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Poster for the film ‘Mirzya’, photo: Paweł Dyllus; Paweł Dyllus, photo: Tomasz Gzell / PAP
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Shortly after Bangistan, another movie featuring Polish cinematography hit India’s screens. Mirzya, a big-budget romantic fantasy by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, was the first Asian project for Paweł Dyllus, an exceptional cinematographer who graduated from Bogdan Dziworski’s film school in Katowice.
Dyllus’ ticket to Bollywood came with Life Feels Good, an emotional low-key story about a young man with cerebral palsy. Throughout the film, Dyllus deliberately immobilised the camera and placed it at the height of his protagonist’s head, making the audience feel as if they were trapped in a disabled body. When this Maciej Pieprzyca-directed film was presented at a festival in Goa, India, it was praised by Mehra, a director who had been nominated for a BAFTA a few years earlier for Rang de Basanti. Mehra invited the Polish cinematographer to collaborate with him on a fairytale story about the love between two people from entirely different worlds.
When asked about the differences between working in Poland and India in an interview with Culture.pl, Dyllus said:
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In Poland, the average budget for a film is 1.5–2 million dollars. In India, large productions cost tens of millions. The audience is very different too. Rakesh Mehra’s previous films, ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaa’ and ‘Rang de Basanti’, attracted tens of millions of cinema-goers. This level of attendance translates into the scale of the project. There are around 250 people on the set of ‘Mirzya’ each day. There are 90 shooting days [compared to 34 in ‘Life is Good’ – ed.]. In India, I work with 25 lighting technicians. In Poland, there are five, sometimes four.
A Pole with an Indian Oscar
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Still from the film ‘Bharat’, cinematography by Marcin Łaskawiec, photo: distributor’s press materials; Marcin Łaskawiec, photo: private archive
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In an interview with Urszula Szwarzenberg-Czerny for Polityka, Julia Piekiełko also commented on the differences in the scale of film productions at that time.
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Bollywood blockbusters have a much larger workforce, meaning that the technical department can carry out large-scale set design or costume projects in a very short time. Budgets are even more difficult to compare because there is a large discrepancy in India. There are small productions, but there are also those with a budget of 100 million złoty, which allows for filming abroad or the realisation of technically complex and large-scale scenes in film studios. The reaction to productions is also different to that in Poland. ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ had box office takings of five and a half billion rupees, which is almost 289 million Polish zloty.
The aforementioned film by Ali Abbas Zafar and Md Minhaj Miah, a sensational story about an Indian agent and his Pakistani comrade-in-arms facing terrorists, was one of the biggest hits of Indian cinema in 2017, and for Polish cinematographer Marcin Łaskawiec, it turned out to be a ticket to the Bollywood big league.
In a way, it was all due to random chance. He received the offer to work on the film at the last minute, taking on the role of director of photography and saving the day like a firefighter. In an interview with Jakub Jakubowski from Gazeta.pl, he recalled:
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It was a quick and spontaneous decision. I was asked if I could be on set in Abu Dhabi in a week. The first takes had already been shot, but there was no chemistry between the director and the cinematographer, so a replacement was needed quickly. I had no plans, so I decided to go for it. It was only later that I realised what I was getting myself into and how much responsibility I was taking on.
When I first arrived on set, I looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, and asked myself, ‘Why me? What am I doing here?’ I hadn’t even made my debut as a cinematographer, and now I was on the set of a huge production with 120 days of shooting across several countries, and it was one of the most anticipated films in India. But there was no time to think [...] So I jumped in, and we were off to the races.
The Polish cinematographer received Bollywood’s equivalent of an Oscar for his work on Tiger Zinda Hai, and even before its premiere, he was inundated with job offers. He became the cinematographer for four more films by Ali Abbas Zafar: ‘Bharat’, starring Salman Khan, was released in 2019, and in the following years, they worked together on the thriller ‘Yogi’, the action film ‘Bloody Daddy’, and the science fiction film ‘Bade Miyan Chote Miyan’. Thanks to these films, Łaskawiec is now considered one of the biggest stars in Indian cinematography.
For Polish cinematographers, Bollywood has become a new promised land of film. With huge budgets, a production output that beats Hollywood hands down, and a gigantic audience, Indian cinema presents them with a challenge, but also an opportunity to experience a different culture and aesthetic sensibility. The stories of Artur Żurawski and Marcin Łaskawiec prove that Bollywood can provide a springboard for many professional achievements, not only in Asia.
Originally written in Polish, translated by Aneta Romańska, September 2025