Adamik is the daughter of directors Agnieszka Holland and Laco Adamik. When martial law was introduced in Poland she left the country together with her mother at the age of nine. Adamik was raised in Paris; she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris and the prestigious Institute St-Luc in Brussels.
Adamik says she spent her childhood on the set; nonetheless her first professional experience was that of her mother's personal assistant on the set of The Secret Garden (1993). She went on to work as a visual artist - a storyboard designer - for films made by her mother, such as Total Eclipse (1995), Washington Square 1997), The Third Miracle (1999) and Shot in the Heart (2001). She also worked on productions led by highly regarded directors, including Baz Luhrman - on Romeo + Juliet (1996), Jonathan Demme - Beloved (1998), Luis Mandoki - Angel Eyes (2001) and Scott Hicks - Hearts in Atlantis (2001).
After being asked in an interview for Viva! magazine about her advance in the professional hierarchy, Adamik said the following:
When I was seven I decided I would draw cartoons. Since I didn't make it in the world of comic books I turned to storyboards and film. I worked with many outstanding directors but I also met a lot of losers who knew much less about film than I did. This was frustrating. When I worked with them I would come up with ideas which they took as their own and ruined them. It made me angry, so when a chance appeared to make my own film - a sheer coincidence - I decided to give it a try. The offer was made at a party in Hollywood.
The film Bark! is a story about a young frustrated woman who one day finds herself barking and acting like a dog. While her intention is to show her discontentment with the surrounding world, her family and friends treat it as a charming folly. The film was well-received by critics and found itself in the main competition at the 2002 Sundance Festival. It was later presented at other events, including festivals in Moscow, Karlovy Vary and Munich. Adamik's name appeared on Variety's ten most promising young talents of the season and she also received a favourable review from The Hollywood Reporter.
In 2002, together with her mother Agnieszka Holland, Adamik started the production of Janosik: A True Story, an epic costume drama about the highland robber who stole from the rich and gave to the poor - a tale popular on both sides of the Tatra Mountains. It was planned as the biggest Polish-Czech-Slovak co-production in the history of the cinema industry in these countries. Unfortunately due to financial problems the project did not come to fruition. It was finally finished in 2009 and aroused a great deal of controversy. Genuine trial documents from 1713 formed the starting point for the film, which strayed considerably from the details of the romantic legend. Adamik strongly defended the ambiguity of her main character. As she told Duży Format:
The Harnaś robbers' embroidered pants and high hats in reality never existed in Janosik's times. They didn't use colourful threads either. Their sweaters looked like those from Zara - young people could wear them today, they're very cool. I like it when costumes in historical films do not become part of the period clichés. The clothes we wear are never entirely contemporary or trendy; just as you don't replace the furniture in your house every couple of years.
In the same interview, Adamik explained how her work on the film proved an exceptionally valuable experience:
I did the documentation, the castings myself. I'd made only one small film before in the United States. And here a huge production, space and storytelling with images. (…) It was a grand scale: helicopters, stuntmen. We used different improvised means; to lift the camera and to make tracking shots we would hang the cameraman on a rope… Yet at the same time there were the small-scale modes of narration: hand-held camera, close to the characters, in motion.
The narrative feel and the grand-scale production of Janosik: A True Story gives it the feel of a contemporary story. At the same time, as Bożena Janicka noted in Kino:
Jura Janosik has a particular trait: the issue he tries to hide the most is the feeling of belonging mixed with a feeling of alienation. He is the only one in his group who knows how to read; he mastered the classic rules of fencing and can show off in front of his peers, winning a duel with a regular officer. The girl he falls in love with and whom he wants to marry is not an ordinary highlander but the vicar's daughter. On the other hand Agnieszka Holland's - and Kasia Adamik's - main character knows he can be himself only among his own folk, even if they think differently. Janosik's divided loyalties are shared by many artists, too.
