Wojciech Pszoniak

Born in Lviv, then a Polish city that now belongs to Ukraine,  Wojciech Pszoniak began to stand out with his work in the most important theaters in Poland, the Old Theater in Krakow, the National Theater in Warsaw and the Powszechny Theater in Warsaw. He achieved international notoriety by playing Moryc Welt, a Jew who with his two best friends tries to start a factory in the 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution, in  Andrzej  Wajda ‘s The Land of the Great Promise . This director was so satisfied with him that he would recruit him again for other of his most outstanding titles, such as The Wedding (Wesele) , Danton and  Korczak . 

From his first collaboration with Wajda they used to call him to play Jews, despite being a Catholic. In the 1980s, Pszoniak moved to Paris, where he continued to work in theater and film, despite not knowing the language. At first, they dubbed him or learned his dialogues phonetically. “I must have done it quite well, because when I really learned French and went to shoot a movie, a director told me that he preferred the accent he had before.” 

Many of his titles, such as  The Death of Robert Mitchum  or  Bitter Harvest , had international repercussions. In 2018, she was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters, for “contributing to the development of Polish-French relations in the field of culture.”