For many years Feliks Falk's film career progressed rather unevenly, one could say, with good films as well as less interesting ones, and even periods of the director's absence from the film market, a time that he partly filled by directing stage productions in various cities in Poland as well as the Television Theatre. Nevertheless he is a director who displays a certain consistency in his interests. In his films one can find an unceasing fascination with situations, to put it briefly, in which the heroes are the victims or, just the opposite, the driving forces of manipulation. This is also true of the films by other directors for which Falk wrote the scripts, to mention Wielki Bieg (The Big Race), or Baryton (The Baritone). At the same time, he refers to political life as well as everyday interpersonal relationships – in the professional field, one example being Szansa (Chance), and even in the emotional sphere. Examples of the latter include Koniec Gry (Game is Over) and Lato Miłości (Summer of Love).
According to Feliks Falk it is impossible to recreate the situation of 1970s cinema, a time when important films in the moral concern genre were made. The director attempted to replicate the unique relation between the film creator and the audience in Komornik (The Collector). The director's view of that period is now more complex.
I was raised in the Polish Peoples' Republic and I am aware of its many sides, Falk said in an interview with Barbara Hollender. I do not have to defend that system because I already have expressed my opinions about it in my films. But I do not agree with all of the judgments. Simplifications, which appear often, annoy me just as much as the one-dimensional view of that period. The army of young historians and politicians who were not even alive back then and who know about the period only from indirect sources, blur the true image in the name of some contrived moral ideology and settling of accounts. The image of the interwar period was distorted in People's Poland, and now you do not show the many complexities of the time of the Polish People's Republic. I find this troubling. I would like to see a fuller image of that reality in films today.
Falk added in the interview that Enen (Case Unknown) was such an attempt. He presented the film in the form of a thriller using mystery and tension, in order to attract young people.
Falk's last film up to date is Joanna (2010), a drama set in Kraków during the German occupation. It tells the story of a woman who hides a little Jewish girl in her home. Tadeusz Sobolewski wrote in his review:
This intimate, purposefully old fashioned film has a clear tone, so rare in modern Polish cinema. Good and evil are not hidden by masks put by the collective. Joanna was made as a reaction to the contemporary, when questions like morality and faith are put on flags of a nation or a party. Falk makes them personal. It is a Christian point of view. The good is lonely, the virtue is hidden under the veil of sin, the sacrifice remains unrecognised – these are all evangelical paradoxes. When we see Christmas lights in occupied Cracow from this perspective, the holiday from which Joanna is banned, become an empty ritual
Gazeta Wyborcza, 27.11.2010.
Feliks Falk has also directed plays at various theatres, including:
Teatr im. Jaracza in Łódź: August Strindberg's Taniec Śmierci (Dance of Death) (1978), Edward Redliński's Pustaki (Bricks) (1980), David Williamson's Przeprowadzka (The Removalists) (1981), David Williamson's The Club (1983), Ireneusz Iredyński's Kreacja (Creation) (1985), Anthony Burgess' Mechaniczna Pomarańcza (The Clockwork Orange) (1991),
Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw: Vaclav Havel's Audience, Wernisaż (Private View) and Protest (1981 and 1989), Teatr Wybrzeże in Gdańsk: Arthur Miller's Śmierć Komiwojażera (Death of a Salesman) (1992), Gregory Burke's Ulica Gagarina (Gagarin Way) (2003),
Teatr Polski in Wrocław: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz's Matka Joanna od Aniołów (Mother Joan of the Angels) (1993), Teatr Ateneum in Warsaw: David Mamet's Oleanna (1994),
Teatr Współczesny im. Wiercińskiego in Wrocław: Eugene Ionesco's Łysa Śpiewaczka (The Bald Soprano) (1994), Teatr Scena Prezentacje in Warsaw: Woody Allen's Seks Nocy Letniej (A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy) (2002).
In 2011 he was awarded Krzyż Oficerski Orderu Odrodzenia Polski prize, and in 2014 – Medal Zasłużony Kulturze – Gloria Artis.