Agnieszka Holland facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Agnieszka Holland
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Holland in 2017
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Agnieszka Holland
28 November 1948 Warsaw, Poland
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| Alma mater | Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague |
| Occupation | film and television director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1973–present |
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Notable work
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Europa Europa (1991) In Darkness (2011) Spoor (2017) Green Border (2023) |
| Spouse(s) | Laco Adamík (divorced) |
| Children | Kasia Adamik |
| Relatives | Magdalena Łazarkiewicz (sister) |
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Agnieszka Holland (born 28 November 1948) is a famous Polish film and TV director and writer. She is known for her important movies that often explore history and politics.
Agnieszka Holland started her career helping other directors like Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda. She moved to France just before a time of strict government control in Poland in 1981.
Some of her most well-known films include Europa Europa (1990) and In Darkness (2011). Both of these movies were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Europa Europa also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
In 2017, she won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for her film Spoor. She has also won the Grand Prix at the Gdynia Film Festival four times. In 2020, she became the President of the European Film Academy. Her 2023 film Green Border won a special award at the 80th Venice International Film Festival.
In her films, Holland often shows the experiences of people during big historical events. She often looks at the problems caused by past governments and wars.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Agnieszka Holland was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1948. Her parents were journalists. Her mother was Catholic and helped Jewish people during the Holocaust, a terrible time when many Jewish people were killed. Her mother even received an award for her bravery.
Agnieszka's father was Jewish. He lost his parents during the Holocaust. Agnieszka was not raised in either faith.
As a child, Agnieszka was often sick. She spent a lot of time writing, drawing, and putting on small plays with other children. When she was thirteen, her father died.
After high school, Agnieszka studied at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). She chose this school because she found the films from Czechoslovakia in the 1960s very exciting. She met her future husband, Laco Adamik, there.
While in Czechoslovakia, she saw the Prague Spring of 1968. This was a time when people wanted more freedom and changes in the government. She was arrested for supporting these ideas. Her time in Prague taught her a lot about politics and art. She realized then that she wanted to be an artist, making films.
Agnieszka graduated from FAMU in 1971. She returned to Poland and wrote her first movie script. Even though it was not allowed to be made into a film, it caught the eye of Andrzej Wajda. He became her mentor, helping her learn more about filmmaking. Her daughter, Kasia, born in 1972, also became a director.
Agnieszka Holland's childhood experiences, with her mixed background, often appear in her films. She explores how different groups of people interact, especially during difficult times like the Holocaust.
Filmmaking Career
Agnieszka Holland started her career helping famous Polish directors. She worked as an assistant director for Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda. For example, she helped with Wajda's 1976 film Man of Marble. This experience taught her how to make films that talked about political and moral issues, even when the government tried to control what people could say. Because of censorship, her name was not always in the credits for her early work.
Her first major film was Provincial Actors (1978). This movie showed the struggles of a small theater group and was seen as a hidden message about Poland's political situation. It won an award at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.
Holland directed two more important films in Poland, Fever (1980) and A Lonely Woman (1981). Then, she moved to France in 1981, just before strict government rules were put in place in Poland. She was told she could not go back to Poland and could not see her daughter for many months.
While living outside Poland, Holland wrote scripts for other Polish filmmakers who were also living in exile. She also started making her own films with European companies. These included Angry Harvest (1985) and To Kill a Priest (1988). Angry Harvest, a German film about a Jewish woman during World War II, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Films About the Holocaust
Some of Agnieszka Holland's most famous films are about the Holocaust. These movies are known for being very realistic. They show that people, whether victims or not, can have both good and bad qualities. Holland believes her films show the world as it is, with all its challenges.
Her best-known film about this time is Europa Europa (1991). It tells the true story of a Jewish teenager named Solomon Perel. He pretended to be German to survive during World War II and even joined the Hitler Youth. The film won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay.
Almost twenty years later, Holland made In Darkness (2011). This film tells the true story of a Polish sewage worker who helped a group of Jewish refugees hide in the sewers of a city called Lwów. The movie shows the complex relationships between Polish and Jewish people during the Holocaust. It highlights how people from different backgrounds faced the same dangers in different ways.
Working in Hollywood
After the success of Europa Europa in 1991, Agnieszka Holland became more known in Hollywood. This led to her directing The Secret Garden (1993). This was a big change for her. It was her first movie for a major American studio and aimed at a wide audience. Before this, her films were often darker and more serious.
Later Career
Agnieszka Holland is a friend of the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. She helped write the script for his film Three Colors: Blue. Like Kieślowski, Holland often explores themes of faith and belief in her work. Many of her films have a strong political message. They show how governments, rules, and family problems can affect people's lives.
In a 1988 interview, Holland said that while women are important in her films, her main focus is not feminism. She explained that when she made films in Poland, everyone, men and women, worked together against censorship. She said she is interested in what happens between people, and in that way, all her movies are political.
Her later films include Olivier, Olivier (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), Total Eclipse (1995), and Washington Square (1997). She also directed episodes for popular TV shows like The Wire and House of Cards.
In 2008, Holland became the first president of the Polish Film Academy. Her 2011 film, In Darkness, was nominated for an Oscar.
In 2013, she directed Burning Bush, a three-part TV series for HBO. It was about Jan Palach, a student who died in 1969. She won an award for Best Director for this series.
In 2017, Agnieszka Holland received the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for her film Spoor. This award is given to films that bring new ideas to the art of filmmaking.
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In 2019, she won the Golden Lions Award for her historical film Mr. Jones. This movie was about the Holodomor, a terrible famine in Ukraine. In 2020, her film Charlatan was chosen as the Czech entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.
Her 2023 film Green Border showed the struggles of migrants at the border between Belarus and the European Union. This film caused a lot of discussion and was praised for its strong message. In October 2023, she received a special award for her long and impactful career from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. She also received an honorary degree from the Łódź Film School.
Her next project is a film about the writer Franz Kafka, called Franz.
Filmography
- Jesus Christ's Sin (Grzech Boga, 1970)
- Evening at Abdon's (Wieczór u Abdona, 1975)
- Pictures from Life: A Girl and Aquarius (Obrazki z życia: dziewczyna i "Akwarius", 1975)
- Sunday Children (Niedzielne dzieci, 1977)
- Screen tests (Zdjęcia próbne, 1976)
- Something for something (Coś za coś, TV movie, 1977)
- Provincial Actors (Aktorzy prowincjonalni, 1979)
- Fever (Gorączka, 1980)
- A Lonely Woman (Kobieta samotna, 1981)
- Postcards from Paris (TV film, 1982)
- Culture (documentary, 1985)
- Angry Harvest (Bittere Ernte, 1985)
- To Kill a Priest (1988)
- Europa Europa (1990)
- Olivier, Olivier (1992)
- The Secret Garden (1993)
- Red Wind (TV movie, 1994)
- Total Eclipse (1995)
- Washington Square (1997)
- The Third Miracle (1999)
- Shot in the Heart (2001)
- Golden Dreams (documentary, 2001)
- Julie Walking Home (2002)
- Cold Case (2004)
- Copying Beethoven (2006)
- The Wire
- Episode 3.08 "Moral Midgetry" (2004)
- Episode 4.08 "Corner Boys" (2006)
- Episode 5.05 "React Quotes" (2008)
- A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story (2006)
- Ekipa (2007)
- Janosik: A True Story (Prawdziwa historia, 2009)
- The Killing
- Episode 1.06 "What You Have Left" (2011)
- Episode 1.09 "Undertow" (2011)
- Episode 2.01 "Reflections" (2012)
- Treme
- Episode 1.01 "Do You Know What It Means" (2010)
- Episode 1.10 "I'll Fly Away" (2010)
- Episode 2.10 "That's What Lovers Do" (2011)
- Episode 4.05 "...To Miss New Orleans" (2013)
- In Darkness (2011)
- Burning Bush (2013)
- Rosemary's Baby (2014)
- House of Cards
- Episode 3.10 "Chapter 36" (2015)
- Episode 3.11 "Chapter 37" (2015)
- Episode 5.10 "Chapter 62" (2017)
- The Affair
- Episode 3.6 (2015)
- Spoor (2017)
- The First
- Episode 1.01 "Separation" (2018)
- Episode 1.02 "What's Needed" (2018)
- Mr. Jones (2019)
- Charlatan (2020)
- Green Border (2023)
- Franz (2025)
Other Work
Agnieszka Holland also translated a famous book called The Unbearable Lightness of Being from Czech to Polish. She did this after meeting the author in 1982. She felt the book's story was very similar to her own experiences and wanted Polish readers to enjoy it.
In 2023, Holland made a special appearance in the Polish Netflix series Absolute Beginners.
See Also
In Spanish: Agnieszka Holland para niños
- List of female film and television directors
- List of LGBT-related films directed by women
- Cinema of Poland
- List of Poles
- List of Polish Academy Award winners and nominees
