Michal Urbaniak in Piotr Trzaskalski's "My Father's Bike", photo: ITI Cinema
For his first big-screen role, in Piotr Trzaskalski's My Father's Bike and at the age of 69, violinist, saxophonist, and composer Michał Urbaniak is chosen as Best Actor at the 16th International Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
In My Father's Bike, Michał Urbaniak plays 70-year-old Włodek, whose wife Barbara left him for another man. With advanced diabetes and an alcohol addiction, he has a heart attack. His long-lost son Paweł, who lives in Germany, and grandson Maciek, who lives in England with his mother, come to see him immediately. Old grudges, accusations and grievances resurface.
"Based in the U.S. for nearly three decades," as Neil Young writes in the Hollywood Reporter, "the violin virtuoso played with seminal film-score composer Krzysztof Komeda's quintet in the early sixties and guested on Miles Davis' 1985 album Tutu." A co-creator of the Polish jazz school who has written scores for over 25 movies, he has performed with international artists Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Billy Cobham and in important concert halls around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Beacon Theatre and Avery Fisher Hall in New York City. Prior to the Tallinn Film Festival prize, critics drew attention to Urbaniak's acting in My Father's Bike, not only as an international selling point but also, as Bartosz Staszczyszyn writes for culture.pl, because "he has the charm of an impolite boy and the tiredness of an old man carrying with him a sense of guilt."
The role was particularly close to home for Urbaniak, as his character Włodek is a retired clarinetist fascinated by jazz. His on-screen son Paweł is a distinguished pianist performing in the world’s prestigious music halls, and music is an issue that divides them and brings them closer together. "Music is the food of family-bonding," as Young writes in his piece. The Tallinn jury cited on the effortlessness with which Urbaniak embodied Włodek. "For many months after the filming I couldn’t stop being Włodek", the jazzman said during the Tofifest Festival. "To find myself again, I had to reach for the help of a psychiatrist. [...] I wasn't a stranger to these sorts of situations and issues."
Sources: culture.pl, Hollywood Reporter
Editor: Marta Jazowska