Robert Bolesto

Robert Bolesto is a screenwriter responsible for the scripts of some of Poland's most gripping contemporary films, including ‘Hardkor Disko’, ‘The Lure’, ‘The Last Family’ and ‘A Heart of Love’.

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Robert Bolesto, photo: Rafał Guz / PAP

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Bolesto was born in 1977 in Kętrzyn. He graduated from secondary technical school, where he learned the craft of an electrician, and went on to study materials engineering at the Warsaw University of Technology. Even though Bolesto dropped out of university, he clearly drew from his technical education in his artistic work: after all, he managed to electrify Polish cinema. His career is all the more impressive taking into consideration that in Poland, directors mostly write their own films, and very few scriptwriters gain recognition.

Bolesto had his literary debut in 2001 in the daily Rzeczpospolita, where he published a short story titled Gorący Dzień (A Hot Day, trans. NS). In 2002 he finished a two-year-long course in creative writing at the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw. Between 2003 and 2006, Bolesto co-operated with Laboratorium Dramatu – an institution founded by Tadeusz Słobodzianek to develop and promote contemporary dramaturgy. During that time, Bolesto wrote many texts for theatre.

The first staging of a piece by Bolesto took place in February 2005 – Krzysztof Rekowski directed his monodrama titled 147 Dni (147 Days, trans. NS). It was a made-up confession of a paedophile listing all the crimes he committed during the titular 147 days.

Between 2006 and 2007, Bolesto was the literary director of Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw. He was dismissed after causing a scandal – more specifically, Bolesto wrote a rebellious manifesto. He himself claims he intended to show it only to Remigiusz Brzyk, the art director. However, somehow the text became public. As Witold Morzek wrote some years later:

Conservative critics turned Bolesto into a symbol of new theatre's barbarism and an icon of a vulgar generation war. Many were very eager to emphasise that he was trained to be an electrician and quote his ironic, defiant manifesto with utter outrage.

After he lost the job at Powszechny Theatre, Bolesto started writing a film script about the Beksińskis – the famous Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, his wife Zofia Beksińska and their son Tomasz, who was a popular music journalist. As Bolesto said in an interview for Made In:

I was interested in the Beksińskis as people rather than as artists. I began writing a theatrical play about them, and after Zdzisław was murdered I completed a film script. It was several years later that the director Jan P. Matuszyński read about the script on Zdzisław Beksiński's Wikipedia page and contacted me because he wanted to film it.

This is how The Last Family (2016) came into being. The film, Jan P. Matuszyński's directorial feature debut, was awarded at numerous festivals all around the world. Bolesto received an Eagle, an award given out by the Polish Film Academy, for best screenplay.

In the meantime, two other films written by Bolesto premiered – the first of them being Hardkor Disko (2014) directed by Krzysztof Skonieczny. Bolesto wrote the script together with the director; it was a feature-length debut for both of them. Hardkor Disko is a harsh critique of the middle class and the oppressiveness of family.

In 2015 The Lure, directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska, had its premiere. The musical turned out to be one of the most spectacular and original debuts in the recent years. It was not Bolesto's and Smoczyńska's first co-operation – in 2007 the director made a short film based on Bolesto's text. As a result, the artists… stopped talking to each other for four years. Luckily for Polish cinema, they nevertheless decided to try joining forces again.

Zuzanna Wrońska of the band Ballady i Romanse told Bolesto the story that inspired him to write The Lure. Zuzanna Wrońska and her sister, Barbara Wrońska, wrote music for the film. As Bolesto recounted, they co-operated very closely on the script – the sisters wrote songs inspired by scenes Bolesto came up with, and vice-versa; Bolesto would write scenes after he received a song written by them.

In an interview for Pleograf: Kwartalnik Akademii Polskiego Filmu, Bolesto told Iwona Kurz:

Figi i Daktyle, the music band whose story we tell in ‘The Lure’, was inspired by a real band called Dorośli. I asked them about the times of the communist regime: whether they were interested in politics or not. They told me they completely did not care. They were living in their own world.

Bolesto decided to include this attitude in his story – as a result, The Lure is a film set in the communist regime in Poland, yet completely devoid of big politics and history, which is a rarity.

In 2017 A Heart of Love was released – a biopic directed by Łukasz Ronduda and written by Robert Bolesto. The film is about two artists, Zuzanna Bartoszek and Wojciech Bąkowski, who are a romantic couple, living together and influencing each other's work. Bolesto co-operated with them on the script – as he said in an interview, he completely did not care about the truth about their relationship and encouraged them to only tell him what was comfortable for them.

After the success of The Lure, Bolesto and Agnieszka Smoczyńska combined efforts working on the international project The Field Guide to Evil. The Polish director shot one of the anthology's segments titled The Kindler and the Virgin. The script, written by Bolesto, was inspired by a 19th century Masurian legend about a man who devoured human hearts.

After a decade, Bolesto returned to theatre – his text Fear was staged by Małgorzata Wdowik (premiere: April 2018, TR Warsaw). He also did a theatre piece with Smoczyńska – Holy Kluska was a witty, energetic musical about a bull terrier raised by a couple of white collar workers (premiere: October 2018, Komuna//Warszawa).

Asked about his writing techniques, Bolesto said in an interview for Dwutygodnik:

When you ask about the main idea behind a film, you're basically looking for an answer to the question: ‘What is this film about?’ This is the worst question ever. It's frequently asked by directors, actors, journalists… It can limit you tremendously and close your mind to new ideas. … In general, I'm an opponent of treatments and all these other forms that are supposedly helpful while writing.

screenwriter