Agnieszka Holland

Agnieszka Holland was born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 28, 1948, to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. Educated as a Catholic, she trained in cinematography in Prague, in the former Czechoslovakia, at the Filmová a Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umění v Praze (FAMU). However, he began his professional career in Poland as an assistant director to Krzysztof Zanussi , with whom he collaborated on Illumination in 1973. He also had the patronage of Andrzej Wajda , and one would say that the character of the restless film student Agnieszka from The Man Of marbleis inspired by her. Holland would take his first steps in psychological films, about the world of theatrical and cinematographic interpretation, and very beginner, said without any pejorative intention, as can be seen in The Screen Test (1977) and Provincial Actors (1979). A single woman is more solid(1981), a film that surprises because communism is openly questioned and the Solidarity union is spoken of without complexes. As the director explained to me in an interview, “The topic I address depends on the moment I’m living. According to this I make one cinema or another. Political cinema, for example, I do when I’m pissed off. When I get angry I want to embarrass politicians.” At the same time, Holland’s relationship with Wajda was forged as a screenwriter in Without Anesthesia (1978), which continued when they looked for work abroad due to the inconvenience of the local authorities, in Danton and A Love in Germany , both from 1983. Already in 1990 they would repeat this type of collaboration in Korczak .

But Holland is interested in directing his own stories, which he will have the opportunity to do on many occasions, but almost always outside of his native Poland, especially in Germany and the United States. In the tradition of the Polish School, she tackles stories of World War II and the persecution of the Jews in Bitter Harvest (1980) and Europe, Europe (1990). With this second film, she achieved an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. Filming outside of his country does not prevent him from addressing issues as close as the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, chaplain of the Solidarity union assassinated by the communist secret police, in Conspiracy to Kill a Priest  (1988).

A more intimate story shot in France, about motherhood and the trauma of kidnapping a child, can be seen in Olivier, Olivier (1992). It is somehow the theme of lost childhood, and precisely the world of children is the object of attention in The Secret Garden (1993), based on the charming children’s play by Frances Hodgson Burnett , a film produced by Francis Ford Coppola for Warner, and Holland’s first Hollywood experience. From there she went on to direct an up-and-coming Leonardo DiCaprio in a neat little biopic about the poet Arthur Rimbaud , Lives on the Edge (1995). And he continues to showcase his literary interests in Washington Square .(1997), adaptation of the play by Henry James , inferior to that delivered by William Wyler forty years earlier in The Heiress .

Again with the support of Coppola’s production, she shoots The Third Miracle (1999), where the director’s Catholic roots are also noted, shown in Conspiracy to Kill a Priest . Indeed, she rigorously describes the investigation carried out by a skeptical priest of a supposed miracle for a beatification process, whose falsehood she intends to demonstrate. Quite inferior, but also related to the need to believe, she shoots Julie Comes Home in 2002 , a rather irregular film. The exact opposite of Copying Beethoven (2006), a very successful imaginary story about a copyist of the great musical composer, where she rightly addresses the issue of artistic creation. She co-starred withDiane Kruger Ed Harris , who had already been under the director’s orders in The Third Miracle , and that the actor would quote in Pollock ‘s acknowledgments , his directorial debut. The director explained that she accepted the challenge of directing the film because of the electrifying scene of the performance of the Ninth Symphony, certainly a brilliant moment.