Jan P. Matuszyński

A film director born on 23 April 1984 in Katowice. He is a laureate of Golden Lions for directing 'The Last Family'.

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Jan P. Matuszyński

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Jan P. Matuszyński, photo: Marcin Obara/PAP

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In 2010, he completed the documentary course at Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing, while two years later defended a diploma at the directing faculty at Katowice Film School.

The director was spotted along with his first short film Razem (Together) with Olga Bołądź and Redbad Klynstra (2006) which was screened at the Film and Artistic Festival 'Lato Filmów' in Toruń. A year older Myjnia (Car Wash) brought him the Jan Machulski Polish Independent Cinema Prize in the best director category and the Grand Prix at the Polish Short Film Festival Short Waves. His further fictional short films – 15 lat milczenia (15 Years of Silence, 2007), about a mime study group, Wiem kto to zrobił (I Know Who Did It, 2008) and the psychological drama Afterparty (2009) – only proved versatile style and great workshop of the young director. Offline (2012), which was created within the framework of the '30min' program, explored the contemporarily important theme of online dating and false identities in the Internet.

An interesting theme was brought up by Matuszyński in his first tv documentary – the protagonists of Amisze znad Wisły (Amishes from Above Vistula, 2010) is an American pair which belonging to the titular Christian congregation, decided to come to Poland a dozen or so years ago. Niebo (Heaven, 2011) was realised within the framework of the First Documentary program; it tells a story of a critically ill man who finds sense in his life in writing icons. Great passion which can overshadow every physical weakness came back as a subject of Deep Love (2013) which was awarded at the Kraków Film Festival and the MFF in Moscow. The film talks about a 50-year-old diver who looses his fitness in effect of a stroke. The paralysed man dreams of coming back into water, his girlfriend helps him to recover and contact the world.

Matuszyński's next professional step was largely motivated by his family situation. As he said in an interview for Onet:

About three years ago, shortly after the premiere of my first film entitled Deep Love, my son was born. With my wife being pregnant, I thought about creating a film about family relations. The Beksiński family answered my needs – Robert Bolesto's script got into my hands at the right time.

The choice of the script came out to be a great success. The Last Family is among the most important Polish films of 2016. The film launched its path of glory in Locarno where Andrzej Seweryn received a Prize for Best Performance. In following months, the film triumphed in Chicago, Kiev and Gdynia where Matuszyński received the Grand Prix, Audience Award and Journalists Award.

From the very beginning of his film career, Matuszyński has collaborated with the cinematographer Kacper Fertacz who was awarded the Main Prize at the Polish Films Competition at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography Camerimage in Bydgoszcz and the prize for cinematography at the Chicago International Film Festival.

When thinking about the essence of cinema, the young director evokes words stated by one of his masters:

Krzysztof Kieślowski used to say that if we face an issue which is indescribable in one simple sentence, we may be facing a subject for a film. This is the case here. This is, in my opinion, the essence of cinema: to show something that looses its magic when being put into words.

After his successful debut, Matuszyński directed a few TV series: The Pack, Druga Szansa (Second Chance, trans. NS) and Nielegalni (The Illegal, trans. NS). However, it was Król (King, trans. NS) that everybody was waiting for. The show, based on Szczepan Twardoch’s acclaimed novel (the English translation by Sean G. Bye, titled King of Warsaw, was published in 2020) premiered in November 2020. As the novel is set in the 1930s, the series posed a challenge, requiring a recreation of interwar Warsaw. As the director said in an interview with Culture.pl:

Someone once said that my film ‘The Last Family’ is an ‘epic film set in interiors’. Shooting ‘Król’, I wanted to achieve exactly the opposite. Even though the novel surely is epic and includes numerous characters, I believed that it should be an intimate story.

The series stars Michał Żurawski, Kacper Olszewski, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Borys Szyc and Magdalena Boczarska. The script was written by Łukasz M. Maciejewski, Szczepan Twardoch and Dana Łukasińska. Kacper Fertasz, Matuszyński’s long-term collaborator, was responsible for cinematography.

Matuszyński was one of the directors invited by HBO to shoot a segment for the 'At Home' anthology. The director decided to document his everyday life, recording his family waiting for the birth of a child during the uneasy times of social isolation during a pandemic.

Matuszyński's second feature film is based on the non-fiction book Żeby Nie Było Śladów by Cezary Łazarewicz – in 2017, the work won the Nike Award, one of Poland's most prestigious literary prizes. The film, titled Leave No Traces in English, is a nearly three-hour long drama about Grzegorz Przemyk, the nineteen-year-old student and budding poet who was beaten to death by the police of the communist regime in 1983.

The script for the film was written by Kaja Krawczyk-Wnuk (the crew also stayed in touch with Łazarewicz, who provided additional material for the film-makers). The long-time collaborator of Matuszyński, cinematographer Kacper Fertacz, manned the camera. Mateusz Górski played Grzegorz Przemyk, whereas the leading role – of the young man's friend who witnessed his murder – was performed by Tomasz Ziętek. The character he created is called Jurek Popiel – it is based on a person, but personal details and certain events were changed, giving Ziętek relative freedom in his portrayal of Popiel. The real witness of the events chose not to be depicted in the film. Sandra Korzeniak played Przemyk's mother, the poet Beata Sadowska. Actors appearing in supporting roles include Jacek Braciak, Aleksandra Konieczna, Agnieszka Grochowska, Robert Więckiewicz and Tomasz Kot. Michał Wysocki was hired as the consultant – he was the paramedic who transported the heavily injured Przemyk from the police station to the hospital. He was later persecuted by the secret police, forced to give false testimony under threats, and eventually sentenced to two and a half years in jail for the alleged 'brutal treatment of Przemyk' – an accusation that was completely false. After the political transformation of 1989, General Czesław Kiszczak, the communist-era interior minister who was in charge of the police force and the secret police, was accused of allowing his subordinates to abuse Michał Wysocki.

The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2021. After the screening, Łukasz Muszyński, the critic for Filmweb.pl, compared Leave No Traces to Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds and Man of Marble – works that 'inspected the painful Polish past to find universal dilemmas that remain very much alive'. The Polish premiere is scheduled for the Gdynia Film Festival – the film is in the main competition. The Polish Film Institute has also submitted Leave No Traces to the international Oscar race.

As the director said in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza, he was also thinking about contemporary police murders whilst working on the film (as reported by several media outlets, at the conference in Venice, Matuszyński drew parallels between the murder of George Floyd and Przemyk's case). This is worth mentioning as Przemyk's case is mostly presented in the context of the communist-era repressions rather than more general police brutality.

In 2021, Matuszyński has also worked on a project initiated by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and directed his variation on the cult documentary film Talking Heads by Krzysztof Kieślowski. For his piece, shot entirely online, the Matuszyński interviewed the legendary director's collaborators and artists who were deeply inspired by Kieślowski's work. As Matuszyński said in an interview for the Polish Press Agency: 'As the director, I remain hidden in my film, because I wouldn't put myself on par with Kieślowski. I have always greatly respected him'. The premiere screening of the film is scheduled for the Gdynia Film Festival in late September 2021.

Filmography:

2006 – Razem (Together, short film at school)
2007 – Myjnia (Car Wash, short film at school), 15 lat milczenia (15 Years of Silence, short film at school)
2008 – Wiem, kto to zrobił (I Know Who Did It, short film at school)
2009 – Afterparty (short film at school)
2010 – Amisze znad Wisły (Amishes from Above Vistula, documentary)
2011 – Niebo (Heaven, documentary)
2012 – Offline (short fiction film)
2013 – Deep Love (documentary)
2016 – Ostatnia rodzina (The Last Family, fiction)
2020 – Król (TV series, based on The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch)
2020 – At Home (segment)
2021 – Leave No Traces (fiction)

Author: Natalia Mętrak-Ruda, December 2016, translated by AW, January 2017. Latest update: NS, Sep 2021.