Top 100 Eastern European Directors
The most important directors from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. 26 Hungarian, 17 Polish, 15 Romanian, 14 Czech, 8 Bulgarian/Macedonian, 7 Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian, 5 Slovak, 4 Georgian, 2 Albanian/Kosovar, one Kazakh and one Ukrainian director.
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- Director
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Inventing a stage name "Boleslawski" (later spelled also "Boleslavsky"), young Pole Boleslaw Ryszard Srzednicki left his second home (Odessa, Russian Empire) to study theatre and train as an actor at the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre before and during WW I. He also acted in a few early Russian films. In the chaotic wake of the Russian Revolution, Civil War and then Soviet Russia's war with Poland (1918-21)--in which Boleslawski fought as a Polish soldier--he left Russia forever, traveling through Poland and Germany, and wound up in the US. In the 1920s he became, along with Maria Ouspenskaya, one of the first teachers in the US of the serious, emotionally grounded, ensemble style of the Moscow Art Theatre (later known as "The Method"). To put his thespian theories into action, Boleslawski created the American Laboratory [Stage] Theatre in New York in 1923 (the forerunner of the Group Theatre of the 1930s and the Actors Studio" after WW II).
Boleslawski also wrote serious theoretical articles about acting for "Theatre Arts Magazine", and in 1933 collected them in a book, "Acting--The First Six Lessons". The coming of sound to motion pictures, and the financial collapse of the American Laboratory Theatre, forced Boleslawski to abandon the New York stage and accept an offer to direct films in Hollywood, beginning in 1929. He made several important films at major studios like MGM and Fox before his premature death in January 1937. Among his most important directing assignments were Rasputin and the Empress (1932) (the only film in which John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore appeared together), Men in White (1934) (Clark Gable and Myrna Loy), The Painted Veil (1934) (Greta Garbo), Les Misérables (1935) (Fredric March and Charles Laughton) and Theodora Goes Wild (1936) (Irene Dunne)--a wide range of genres. He even directed a musical, Metropolitan (1935) (Lawrence Tibbett) and a western, Three Godfathers (1936) (Chester Morris).
Boleslawski was married at least three times. From his last marriage--to pianist-actress Norma Drury--he had one child, a son named Jan (1935-1962) who tragically was to lose his father before he was two years old, and later to lose his own life at the tender age of 27. Boleslawski's death of cardiac arrest, at age 47--before he had completed his final film (The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937) with Joan Crawford)--was shockingly sudden and from unclear causes. One explanation, probably incorrect, traces his illness to his penultimate film, The Garden of Allah (1936) (with Marlene Dietrich), the exteriors of which were shot in the burning heat of the southwestern American desert. At some point, it is claimed, he unwisely "drank [unboiled] water" rather than soft drinks and bottled water (as the company had been advised to do).- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Gustav Machatý was born on May 9, 1901 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic). His first experience with the motion picture industry was playing piano at movie theaters, accompanying silent pictures. In 1917, he made his debut as an actor.
In the early 1920s, he emigrated to the United States, taking up residence in Hollywood, where he learned filmmaking as an apprentice to two masters, D.W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim. After serving a four-year apprenticeship in Hollywood, he returned to Prague to make his own films. Two movies, "Erotikon" (1929) and "Ekstase" (1933) made him internationally famous.
"Ekstase" was nominated for the Mussolini Cup at the Venice Film Fesitval. Released as "Ecstasy" in the U.S. with the advertising tag-line "The Most Talked About Picture in the World," "Ekstase" featured young Hedy Kiesler in the nude. Kiesler, who would become internationally famous herself as Hedy Lamar, played a sexually frustrated hausfrau who achieves orgasm (ecstasy) in the arms of a young swain who has espied her in the buff making like one of Busby Berkeley's water nymphs, sans bathing suit.
When exhibitor Samuel Cummins imported the film in 1935, the U.S. Customs Service seized the print, acting under the aegis of the 1930 Customs Act that forbade importing obscene material. Cummins appealed to the federal courts, but the Customs agents had burned the print, and with no physical evidence, his appeal was denied.
The frustrated Cummins edited his next imported copy, cutting out Hedy's naked run through the woods and a scene of horses copulating, and adding a moralistic voice-over that said her character had divorced her impotent husband before her affair. A new ending with a baby was added, suggesting that Hedy and her young swain had married. The U.S. Customs Service allowed this version to be imported into the U.S., but the State of New York Board of Review refused to license the picture for exhibition. Cummins' Eureka Productions filed suit in federal court, but the ban was upheld as the U.S. Court of Appeals held that once a picture was imported into the U.S., it was subject to local censorship.
The film was a modest success on the art house circuit, and once Lamar became famous as an American movie star, all the nudity was cut out of the film and it received a Production Code Administration Seal of Approval in 1940 and was re-released. Even with the cuts, the movie ran afoul of local censors. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts forbade the movie to be shown on Sundays, and the state of Pennsylvania banned it outright. "Ecstasy" was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church's censorship body, the Legion of Decency, making it one of the few foreign films to win that dubious honor.
It was a viewing of "Ekstase" that introduced Hedy Kiesler to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production boss Louis B. Mayer, who despised the film but signed the beautiful Kiesler to a contract and rechristened her Hedy Lamarr. Thus, Gustav Machatý is responsible for giving the motion picture medium the actress who was described as the "Most Beautiful Woman in the World" in the 1940s.
Gustav Machatý died on December 13, 1963 in Munich, Germany.- Producer
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- Additional Crew
One of a large group of Hungarian refugees who found refuge in England in the 1930s, Sir Alexander Korda was the first British film producer to receive a knighthood. He was a major, if controversial, figure and acted as a guiding force behind the British film industry of the 1930s and continued to influence British films until his death in 1956. He learned his trade by working in studios in Austria, Germany and America and was a crafty and flamboyant businessman. He started his production company, London Films, in 1933 and one of its first films The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), received an Oscar nomination as best picture and won the Best Actor Oscar for its star, Charles Laughton. Helped by his brothers Zoltan Korda (director) and Vincent Korda (art director) and other expatriate Hungarians, London Films produced some of Britain's finest films (even if they weren't all commercial successes). Korda's willingness to experiment and be daring allowed the flowering of such talents as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and gave early breaks to people such as Laurence Olivier, David Lean and Carol Reed. Korda sold his library to television in the 1950s, thus allowing London Films' famous logo of Big Ben to become familiar to a new generation of film enthusiasts.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
A one time Hungarian cavalry officer, Zoltan Korda started working in films as a cameraman then an editor before becoming a director with London Films run by his brother Alexander Korda. Zoltan had strong liberal/socialist ideals and often clashed with Alexander, who, despite their both being born in Hungary, was a proud supporter of the old British Empire.- Director
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- Actor
Curtiz began acting in and then directing films in his native Hungary in 1912. After WWI, he continued his filmmaking career in Austria and Germany and into the early 1920s when he directed films in other countries in Europe. Moving to the US in 1926, he started making films in Hollywood for Warner Bros. and became thoroughly entrenched in the studio system. His films during the 1930s and '40s encompassed nearly every genre imaginable and some, including Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945), are considered to be film classics. His brilliance waned in the 1950s when he made a number of mediocre films for studios other than Warner. He directed his last film in 1961, a year before his death at 74.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Educated at the Universities of Prague and Stuttgart, Emeric Pressburger worked as a journalist in Hungary and Germany and an author and scriptwriter in Berlin and Paris. He was a Hungarian Jew, chased around Europe (he worked on films for UFA in Berlin and Paris) before World War II, finally finding sanctuary in London--but as a scriptwriter who didn't speak English. So he taught himself to understand not only the finer nuances of the language but also of the British people. A few lucky breaks and introductions via old friends led to his meeting with "renegade" director Michael Powell. They then went on to make some of the most interesting (IMHO) and complex films of the 1940s and 1950s under the banner of "The Archers". Pressburger often showed a deep understanding of the British only granted to those "outside, looking in". He always prided himself on being "more English than the English". After all, some of us were just BORN English, but he CHOSE to become English. He spent his last days at Shoemakers Cottage, Aspall, Stowmarket, Suffolk in the English countryside that he loved so well.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Editor
Alexander Hammid was born on 17 December 1907 in Linz, Austria-Hungary [now Upper Austria, Austria]. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Power Among Men (1959), Crisis (1939) and The Forgotten Village (1941). He was married to Hella Heyman and Maya Deren. He died on 26 July 2004 in New York City, New York, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Hungarian-born Karoly Vidor spent the First World War as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian infantry. Following the armistice, he made his way to Berlin and worked for the German film company Ufa, as editor and assistant director. In 1924, he emigrated to the U.S. and, for several years, earned his living as a singer in Broadway choruses and (at one time) with a Wagnerian troupe. While little detail is extant of this period in his career, it enabled him to accumulate the means with which to finance his own project: an experimental short film entitled The Bridge (1929). On the strength of this, he was signed by MGM to co-direct his first feature film The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). For the remainder of the decade, Vidor worked with relatively undistinguished material at various studios, notably RKO (1935) and Paramount (1936-37). In 1939, he joined Columbia, where he remained under contract until 1948.
Vidor's career is something of an enigma. Never a particularly prolific filmmaker, his output has been variable. It includes a good-looking, but decidedly stodgy romance, The Swan (1956) (starring Grace Kelly in her penultimate screen role); and the interminably dull remake of A Farewell to Arms (1957). On the other side of the ledger is the lavish showbiz biopic of singer Ruth Etting, Love Me or Leave Me (1955), for which Vidor elicited powerhouse performances from his stars Doris Day and James Cagney. Frank Sinatra, also, gave one of his best performances as nightclub entertainer Joe E. Lewis, descending into alcoholism in The Joker Is Wild (1957). Other Vidor standouts are Ladies in Retirement (1941), a gothic Victorian thriller, tautly directed and maintaining its suspense, despite a relatively claustrophobic setting (among the cast, as Lucy the maid, was actress Evelyn Keyes, who became Vidor's third wife in 1944). Finally, two Rita Hayworth vehicles, the breezy musical Cover Girl (1944), and Vidor's principal masterpiece, the archetypal film noir Gilda (1946). This cleverly plotted, morally ambiguous tale of intrigue and ménage-a-trois was one of Columbia's biggest money-earners to date.
Some of the wittier dialogue in "Gilda" was voiced in re-takes, long after primary filming had been completed. The same applies to the two main musical numbers, the show-stopping "Put the Blame on Mame", and "Amado Mio". Yet, under Vidor's direction, all the dramatic and musical elements blended perfectly. The film has an undeniably electric atmosphere, largely due to the chemistry between the three leads. When the same material was later re-worked as Affair in Trinidad (1952) (with a bigger budget), that chemistry was notably absent.
In 1948, Vidor fell out with studio boss Harry Cohn, taking him to court for alleged verbal abuse and exploitation. He wanted out of his contract. Having just married Doris Warner, daughter of Warner Brothers president Harry M. Warner, Vidor sensed opportunities in working at a more prestigious studio. Cohn wasn't going to let him go quietly. It was pretty much all over, when actor Steven Geray testified, that he had himself been on the receiving end of invective at the hands of Vidor on the set of "Gilda". Glenn Ford, who thought Vidor opportunistic, then went on the stand, relating, that Cohn routinely used foul language on everyone around him, rather than aiming at any individual in particular. The fact that Vidor was not the easiest man to get along with, became evident during filming of the Liszt biopic Song Without End (1960). Both his stars (Dirk Bogarde and Capucine) found him to be ill-tempered and erratic. However, since Vidor died before the film was completed (George Cukor taking over), other factors may have played a part. In the final analysis, for "Gilda" alone, Charles Vidor deserves a niche in Hollywood heaven.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Géza von Radványi was born on 17 December 1907 in Kassa, Hungary, Austria-Hungary [now Kosice, Slovak Republic]. He was a writer and director, known for Uncle Tom's Cabin (1965), Európa nem válaszol (1941) and Mädchen in Uniform (1958). He was married to Mária Tasnádi Fekete and Eva Daghofer. He died on 27 November 1986 in Budapest, Hungary.- Director
- Writer
- Art Department
Aleksander Ford was born on 24 November 1908 in Kiev, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]. He was a director and writer, known for Five from Barska Street (1954), Knights of the Teutonic Order (1960) and The Eighth Day of the Week (1958). He was married to Eleanor Griswold, Olga Minska and Janina Wieczerzynska. He died on 4 April 1980 in Naples, Florida, USA.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
One of the most respected cinematographers in the industry, Polish-born Rudolph Mate entered the film business after his graduation from the University of Budapest. He worked in Hungary as an assistant cameraman for Alexander Korda and later worked throughout Europe with noted cameraman Karl Freund. Mate was hired to shoot some second-unit footage for Carl Theodor Dreyer and Erich Pommer, and they were so impressed with his work that they hired him as cinematographer on Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (US title: "The Passion of Joan of Arc"). Mate was soon working on some of Europe's most prestigious films, cementing his reputation as one of the continent's premier cinematographers. Hollywood came calling in 1935, and Mate shot films there for the next 12 years before turning to directing in 1947. Unfortunately, while many of his directorial efforts were visually impressive (especially his sci-fi epic When Worlds Collide (1951)), the films themselves were for the most part undistinguished, with his best work probably being the film-noir classic D.O.A. (1949).- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Editor
Laslo Benedek was brought to Hollywood from Hungary--where he had been a writer, editor and photographer--by MGM, and his first few films were undistinguished programmers. His third, however, was quite a bit better: Death of a Salesman (1951), the screen version of Arthur Miller's classic play. Although trashed by critics at the time for, among other things, its "staginess" (Benedek said that he wanted to keep the work's theatricality intact), overlooked is the fact that Benedek drew out convincing, evocative performances from Kevin McCarthy, Cameron Mitchell, Fredric March and Mildred Dunnock.
Benedek's next film, however, is the one he'll be remembered for: The Wild One (1953). This granddaddy of all biker flicks is amusingly tame--some might even say lame--by today's standards, but it caused quite a commotion in its day (it was banned in England and was railed against by conservative religious and social pressure groups in the US as yet one more example of how Hollywood was "corrupting the youth of America"). The film is actually not all that much, being rather slow-going and the "bikers" coming across more like bratty teenagers than dangerous rampaging hoods, but it struck a chord with young people and parents alike--for different reasons, of course--and was far and away the most successful film of Benedek's career.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Ladislao Vajda was born on 18 August 1906 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a director and writer, known for It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958), The Miracle of Marcelino (1955) and Mi tío Jacinto (1956). He died on 25 March 1965 in Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain.- Director
- Writer
- Production Designer
He was born in 1917 and between the two World War he finished his primary and secondary school. After them he graduated in the College of Fine Arts, which helped him later to be a production-designer. He liked to learn and joined the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. He bacame a director and actor. In the beginning of his career he was a production-designer, actor and he directed in theatres. He liked illustration and made many book illustrations. After the 2nd WW he was the main director of the Magyar Theatre, and in 1947 he was the member of the National Theatre. In 1950 he got a job in the Film Factory as an art director. Occasionally he wrote scripts. His first film Vihar (1952) is filmed in a Hungarian village. At the height of his career he made the internationally renowned film Merry-Go-Round (1956). He died in heart-attack when he was 77.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Rangel Vulchanov was one of the few Bulgarian directors who had not studied in Moscow. He graduated from a vocational high school and the Theatrical Institute, worked as assistant director five years; in 1956 was Sharaliev's second unit director in Two Victories. After the critique of On a Small Island, he also was employed as a second-unit director in 1958 in Stars, a co-production between Bulgaria and East Germany that was directed by Konrad Wolf. Rangel Vulchanov was a director of nearly 20 Bulgarian movies and script-writer of another 8 films. He also performed in several movies as well as on the theatre stage in Bulgaria. Rangel Vulchanov was elected best Bulgarian film director of the 20th century. He was a member of the European Film Academy and a laureate of many Bulgarian and international awards. Rangel Vulchanov was an original maker who used his imagination to make experiments in his films. In The Unknown Soldier's Patent Leather Shoes (1979), shot through the view of a seven-year old child, the renowned director takes us through the one-time Bulgarian village and its ancient traditions all the way to the Buckingham Palace. The movie is a mixture of fabulous scenes and great sense of humor and the characters of the classical rural Bulgaria stand engraved in our memory. One of the brightest roles of Rangel Vulchanov at the theatre stage was in Lazaritsa mono play written by the classic of the Bulgarian literature Yordan Radichkov. Rangel Vulchanov was quite ill during the last years of his life. However, he managed to write three books. One of them was entitled "We will all die, and now Cheers!"- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Jerzy Kawalerowicz was born on 19 January 1922 in Gwozdziec, Stanislawowskie, Poland [now Hvizdets, Ukraine]. He was a director and writer, known for Night Train (1959), Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) and Death of a President (1977). He was married to Lucyna Winnicka, Maria Güntner and Malgorzata Dipont. He died on 27 December 2007 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Ion Popescu-Gopo was born on 1 May 1923 in Bucharest, Romania. He was a director and writer, known for If I Were Harap Alb (1965), A Bomb Was Stolen (1962) and Comedie fantastica (1975). He died on 29 November 1989 in Bucharest, Romania.- Director
- Writer
- Cinematographer
Andrzej Munk was born on 16 October 1920 in Kraków, Malopolskie, Poland. He was a director and writer, known for Passenger (1963), Eroica (1958) and Man on the Tracks (1957). He died on 20 September 1961 in Lowicz, Lódzkie, Poland.- Director
- Writer
- Cinematographer
Vojtech Jasný was born on 30 November 1925 in Kelc, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and writer, known for All My Good Countrymen (1969), When the Cat Comes (1963) and Touha (1958). He died on 15 November 2019 in Prerov, Czech Republic.- Director
- Writer
- Cinematographer
Witold Lesiewicz was born on 9 September 1922 in Bialystok, Podlaskie, Poland. He was a director and writer, known for Gwiazdy musza plonac (1954), Miejsce dla jednego (1966) and Boleslaw Smialy (1972). He died on 23 March 2012 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Editor
Budapest-born Endre Marton began in the film industry as an editor and assistant director with Vita and Sascha Films in Vienna. Following a brief sojourn in Hollywood with Ernst Lubitsch in 1923, he returned to Germany, having being signed as chief editor by the Tobis company. He made his directorial debut with an independently produced British mystery, Dreary House (1928). As a Jew, he was one of many talented film makers forced to flee Germany after the Nazis rose to power.
Marton had spent much of his youth in the Tyrolean Alps, nurturing an adventurous spirit and developing a fondness for spectacular mountain scenery and skiing. This was certainly a contributing factor to his being hired by MGM, initially to direct the ski sequences for Greta Garbo's Two-Faced Woman (1941). Later, his work was increasingly typified by outdoor adventure subjects, like The Wild North (1952), Green Fire (1954) and Storm Over Tibet (1952) (a remake of his earlier effort Der Dämon des Himalaya (1935), a Swiss production shot on location in Tibet). Taking risks was always inherent in Marton's preoccupation with achieving suspense and an authentic feel for location. For instance, during the filming for 'The Wild North' in Sun Valley, Idaho, he and actor Stewart Granger fell into an icy crevice and were trapped there for more than two hours. One of his more prestigious assignments came about by chance, when he was tasked with replacing Compton Bennett as director of King Solomon's Mines (1950), after the latter had been taken ill.
His chief claim to fame, however, lay in some excellent work as second-unit director, notably in charge of the chariot race for William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1959), as well as of the Normandy invasion sequences for the World War II epic The Longest Day (1962). After his contract with MGM expired in 1954, Marton founded his own production company in conjunction with fellow Hungarian émigrés Ivan Tors and Laslo Benedek. He later concentrated on TV adventure series, helming the pilots, respectively for Daktari (1966) and Cowboy in Africa (1967).- Director
- Writer
- Cinematographer
Vulo Radev (1 January 1923 - 28 March 2001) was a Bulgarian film director, writer and cinematographer. Radev was born in a village Lesidren. In 1953, Radev graduated from the filming faculty of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. His first film, a documentary, appeared in 1952. Radev later filmed Citizens of Dimitrovgrad (1956), On the Eve (1959, adapted from I. S. Turgenev's novel), and Tobacco (1962). In his first own film, The Peach Thief (1964, adapted from Emiliyan Stanev's novella), Vulo Radev expresses his anguish for modern man (along the lines of Godart and Antonioni) through the love story between the Serbian Officer Ivo, a prisoner of war at the concentration camp of the Bulgarians, and Lisa, the wife of the city's commander - a great love story amidst the inhuman hatred of war. The critics praise the excellent artistic knowledge; sensitivity in conception and structure of the subject matter; as well as excellent guiding of actors. As a chamber piece, the drama was made in the style of the then popular realistic psychological literature. Radev used the same style in his next film The King and The General (1966), a story of the conflict between King Boris III and General Zaimov, who tried in the beginning of the World War II to prevent both Bulgarian's alliance with Germany and its entry into the war against Soviet Union. Radev broke a number of conventions in this film too. Other films directed by him include The Longest Night (1967), Doomed Souls (1975, adapted from Dimitar Dimov's novella), and The Black Angels (1970). In 1981, he directed Adaptation, a film addressing issues of insanity. Radev received the Dimitrov Prize in 1969.- Director
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- Actor
Jan Nemec was born on 12 July 1936 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and writer, known for Toyen (2005), Diamonds of the Night (1964) and Mucedníci lásky (1967). He was married to Iva Ruszeláková, Veronica Baumann, Marta Kubisová and Ester Krumbachová. He died on 18 March 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Lyubomir Sharlandzhiev was a Bulgarian film director and actor. He graduated from the Sofia Academy of Dramatic Art after studying theater direction. He was in training in Moscow in the classes of Mikhail Rom. His debut in cinema is the film A Chronicle of Sentiments (1962). The films by Lyubomir Sharlandzhiev strove to examine what goes on inside people, and to discover more than superficial glance can reveal. In Crack-up (1966), he showed a spiritual crisis of a newspaperman who had to resort to fraud to put across a beneficial project. In Prosecutor (1968), he explored the dilemma of a man who is supposed to sign a warrant for the arrest of a friend he knows to be innocent. This film was released after the fall of communist regime in November 1989. In The Odor of Almonds (1967), based on the scenario by the one of most experienced scriptwriters Pavel Vezhinov, he presented two love story of three couple, two no equilateral marital triangles. In later films, such as The Best Man I know (1973) Sharlandzhiev resorted to sheer moralizing. Nevena Kokanova was cast in her first major screen role opposite Lyubomir Sharlandziev in the 1957 film "Years of Love". Lyubomir falls in love with her at first sight, and the 19-year old, inexperienced Nevena marries her first on-screen romantic partner. He directs Nevena in a multitude of plays, first in Gabrovo, then in Ruse, all the while acting as her unofficial acting tutor, constantly honing her skill. Lyubomir Sharlandzhiev had many national prizes for his films. In 1980 he received Gran Prix of Union of Bulgarian filmmakers "Golden Camera" for his achievement in the Bulgarian film art.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Ján Kadár was born on 1 April 1918 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a director and writer, known for The Shop on Main Street (1965), Smrt si ríká Engelchen (1963) and Obzalovaný (1964). He died on 1 June 1979 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Elmar Klos was born on 26 January 1910 in Brünn, Moravia, Austria-Hungary [now Brno, Czech Republic]. He was a director and writer, known for The Shop on Main Street (1965), Smrt si ríká Engelchen (1963) and Obzalovaný (1964). He died on 19 July 1993 in Prague, Czech Republic.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Karel Kachyna was born on 1 May 1924 in Vyskov, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and writer, known for The Ear (1970), Nadeje (1964) and The High Wall (1964). He was married to Alena Mihulová. He died on 12 March 2004 in Prague, Czech Republic.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Born in Kraków, Poland, in 1925. Feature film director. Graduated in 1946 from Cracow Film Institute, also studied painting. From 1947 to 1957 made a number of documentary shorts and educational films. Feature film debut: _The Noose_ (Petla, 1958, co-scr.). Other films: _Farewells_ (Pozegnania, 1958, co-scr.), awarded in Locarno and London 1959; _Roommates_ ((Wspolny pokoj, 1960, co-scr.); _Parting_ (Rozstanie, 1961); _Gold_ (Zloto, 1962); _How to Be Loved_ (Jak byc kochana, 1962), Polish Film Critics award, also awarded in San Francisco 1963 and beirut 1964; _The Saragossa Manuscript_ (Pamietnik znaleziony w Saragossie, 1964), awarded in San Sebastian and Edinburgh 1965, in Sitges 1966; _Codes_ (Szyfry, 1966), _The Doll_ (Lalka, 1968, co-scr.), awarded in Panama 1969; _The Sandglass_ (Sanatorium pod Klepsydra, 1973), awarded in Cannes 1973, Grand Prix in Trieste 1974.- Actor
- Production Designer
- Director
Liviu Ciulei was one of the most important directors in Romanian cinema. Born on July 7th 1923 in Bucharest, he was raised in a family of intellectuals. His father was a renowned architect. Ciulei studied architecture himself, and then he attended 'The Royal College of Theater and Music of Bucharest'. His debut as an actor came with the 1946 stage version of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Odeon Theater in Bucharest. In 1954, Ciulei made his directorial debut with N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker" at Bulandra Theater (then called The Municipal Theater). He also started a prodigious career as a stage designer, mainly for his own theatrical productions. In 1964, Ciulei became the first Romanian filmmaker to win the 'Best Director' award at the Cannes Film Festival for his acclaimed epic Forest of the Hanged (1965). This was his 7th picture as a film actor and the 3rd and last as a film director. He continued to work hard as a director, actor and stage designer for the theater in Romania, but also abroad, in Canada, Australia and the US. He became the director of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1980. After the Romanian Revolution (1989), Ciulei returned to Romania for several new plays, as the Honorary Manager of the Bulandra Theater. In his last decades, Liviu Ciulei's interactions with the film world were limited to filmed plays (O scrisoare pierduta - 1977, Hamlet - 2000) and a documentary about his greatest stage designs. Ciulei died on the 24th October 2011 shortly before the first US retrospective of his complete films in New York City.- Director
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Miklos Jancsó was born in 1921 in Vac, Hungary. His mother Angela Poparada was Romanian and his father Sandor Jancsó Hungarian. Jancsó received a degree in Law from the University of Cluj-Napoca in 1944. After fighting in WWII and a brief period as a POW, he chose to join the Film and Theater Academy in Budapest, and graduated with a diploma in Film Directing in 1950. His fifth feature film The Round-Up (1966) was a huge hit domestically and internationally and is often considered a significant work of world cinema. Hungarian film critic Zoltan Fabri called it "perhaps the best Hungarian film ever made." Film critic Derek Malcolm included the film in his list of the 100 greatest films ever made. In Hungary, it was seen by over a million people (in a country with a population of 10 million). His next film The Red and the White (1967) became Jancsó's biggest success internationally. It won for example the 'Best Foreign Film' award from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics. In his following films he developed a personal style of historical analysis using complex camera movements, dance and popular songs, creating his own cinematic style he called "political musical". The long takes became a trademark of Jancsó, so for example the 80-minute long Winter Wind (1969) consists of only 12 shots. Jancsó received the 'Best Director' award at the Cannes Film Festival 1972 for the film Red Psalm (1972). During the 1970s, Jancsó divided his time between Italy and Hungary and made a number of films in Italy, the best known of which is Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976). At that time, his films Hungarian Rhapsody (1979) and Allegro barbaro (1979) were the most expensive to have been produced in Hungary, but the critical reaction was muted. Jancsó was awarded the Career Golden Lion at the Venice Film festival in 1990. After little success and a long break Jancsó returned with The Lord's Lantern in Budapest (1998), which proved to a be a surprising comeback for the director. This success led to a succession of 5 more Pepe (Zoltán Mucsi) and Kapa (Péter Scherer) films, the last in 2006. Jancsó also cemented his reputation by making appearances in a number of films, for example as himself in his Pepe and Kapa films and in guest roles in works by up-and-coming Hungarian directors. Jancsó died of lung cancer on 31 January 2014, aged 92. Fellow Hungarian director Béla Tarr called Jancsó "the greatest Hungarian film director of all time" and acknowledged Jancsó's influence on his own work.- Director
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Vera Chytilová was born on February 2, 1929, in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). She studied philosophy and architecture in Brno for two years, then worked as a technical draftsman, a designer, a fashion model, a photo re-toucher, then worked as a clapper girl for Barrandov Film Studios in Prague. There she continued as a writer, actress, and assistant director.
She was denied a scholarship, or even a recommendation from Barrandov, but she took the admissions tests at FAMU and was accepted. From 1957-1962 she studied film directing under Otakar Vávra, who also taught Jirí Menzel, Milos Forman, Jan Nemec, and Ivan Passer. In 1962 she graduated as director from Film Academy (FAMU) in Prague. Her graduation film 'Strop' (Ceiling 1962) and the following film 'Pytel blech' (A Bagful of Fleas 1963) were "staged" improvisations with non-actors. In 1966 Chytilova and her husband, 'Jaroslav Kucera', made a witty surrealist comedy Daisies (1966), which was immediately banned, but then was released in 1967, and won the Grand Prix at the Bergamo Film Festival. She remained in Czechoslovakia after the events of 1968, when her colleagues Milos Forman, Jan Nemec, and Ivan Passer emigrated. Her films were often "shelved" for reasons of political censorship. For six years Chytilova was banned from making films. In 1976 she wrote a letter of complaint to President Gustav Husak, describing her artistic position. After some behind-the-scenes influence by her supporters, Chytilova was allowed to make a low-budget Hra o jablko (1977), which won a Silver Hugo at Chicago Film Festival.
Chytilova belongs among the foremost directors of the 1960's Czech New Wave, which was influenced by both the French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism. Her films were acclaimed for visual experimentation and for bold unmasking of the moral problems of contemporary society. Her art belongs to what Sergei Eisenstein described as "intellectual cinema", that embraces the mix of "avant-garde", "cinema verite", "formalism", "feminism", or "happening" and, with a good deal of humor, it spreads beyond definitions. Chytilova's films often present a multi-layered plethora of visual associations that encourages the viewer to make active interpretations. She survived through the political turbulences in Czechoslovakia and has been a highly original and uncompromising filmmaker.- Director
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András Kovács was born on 20 June 1925 in Chindia, Romania. He was a director and writer, known for Hideg napok (1966), The Stud Farm (1978) and Bekötött szemmel (1975). He died on 11 March 2017 in Budapest, Hungary.- Director
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One of the most acclaimed and successful Yugoslav directors, born in 1929. in Paris. Studied film directing at the prestigious Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague (1947/48). His studies remained unfinished due to the political aggravation between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia at the time and he was forced to return to homeland. He graduated Art History in Belgrade (1955). Filmmaker since 1948. in various projects. At first, assisting to other directors and shooting documentaries. Awarded several times for his early works in these movies including very successful documentaries 'Let nad mocvarom' (1956), 'Petar Dobrovic' (1958), 'Putevi' (1959) and 'Sabori' (1963). After two films with various success and acclamation ('Dvoje' in 1961 and 'Dani' in 1963) he directs very successful war drama 'Tri' ('Three', 1965) which won raves from critics in Yugoslavia and Europe and an Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination in 1966. However, film wasn't so well received in theaters. Now it is considered one of the best movies in Yugoslavia. His next project 'Skupljaci perja' ('I Even Met Happy Gypsies', 1967), metaphorical social drama about gypsies was even more successful. It also won an Oscar nomination - the very next year after 'Three' - in 1967, Grand Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes Film Festival and established Petrovic as one of the most talented and skillful European directors in 1960s. Unlike 'Three' it was very well received and translated in over 100 languages. In 1977. he made the German film Group Portrait with a Lady (1977) starring Romy Schneider, which was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. Members of Yugoslavian Board of the Academy of Film Art and Science (AFUN) voted two of his movies among ten best Serbian films in 1947-1995 period - 'I Even Met Happy Gypsies' (#2) and 'Three' (#4). He was one of the founders of so-called New Yugoslavian Film wave. Was professor at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Wrote several books on movie and was film theoretic.- Director
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Piotr Szulkin was born on 26 April 1950 in Gdansk, Pomorskie, Poland. He was a director and writer, known for The War of the Worlds: Next Century (1981), Golem (1980) and Ga-ga: Glory to the Heroes (1986). He was married to Renata Karwowska-Szulkin. He died on 3 August 2018 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.- Actor
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Jirí Menzel was born on 23 February 1938 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was an actor and director, known for Closely Watched Trains (1966), I Served the King of England (2006) and Larks on a String (1969). He was married to Olga Menzelová-Kelymanová. He died on 5 September 2020 in Prague, Czech Republic.- Director
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Lucian Pintilie was born on 9 November 1933 in Tarutino, Bessarabia, Romania [now Tarutyne, Odessa Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a director and writer, known for Next Stop Paradise (1998), Sunday at Six (1966) and The Oak (1992). He was married to Clody Bertola. He died on 16 May 2018 in Bucharest, Romania.- Director
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Born in Kwilcz, Poland, Walerian Borowczyk trained as a painter and lithographer, winning Poland's National Prize in 1953. He began his film career as a film poster designer, then started making short animated films in the late 1950s. Moving to France in the early 1960s, he gained a reputation as a leading animator before switching to live-action features, which have become increasingly controversial due to their explicitly erotic and sensational content.- Director
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Jaromil Jires was born on 10 December 1935 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia [now Slovak Republic]. He was a director and writer, known for The Joke (1969), Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) and ...a pozdravuji vlastovky (1972). He died on 26 October 2001 in Prague, Czech Republic.- Director
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Zoltán Huszárik was born on 14 May 1931 in Domony, Hungary. He was a director and writer, known for Sinbad (1971), Csontváry (1980) and Elégia (1966). He was married to Ildikó Móger, Anna Nagy and Melczer, Annamária. He died on 15 October 1981 in Budapest, Hungary.- Director
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Dusan Hanák was born on 24 April 1938 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia [now Slovakia]. He is a director and writer, known for I Love, You Love (1989), Pictures of the Old World (1972) and Ruzové sny (1977).- Actress
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Oja Kodar was born in 1941 in Dubrava kraj Zagreba, Croatia, Yugoslavia [now Croatia]. She is an actress and writer, known for Jaded (1989), The Other Side of the Wind (2018) and The Deep (1970).- Director
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Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.
His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years before World War II began. On Germany's invasion in 1939, as a family of mostly Jewish heritage, they were all sent to the Krakow ghetto. His parents were then captured and sent to two different concentration camps: His father to Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria, where he survived the war, and his mother to Auschwitz where she was murdered. Roman witnessed his father's capture and then, at only 7, managed to escape the ghetto and survive the war, at first wandering through the Polish countryside and pretending to be a Roman-Catholic kid visiting his relatives. Although this saved his life, he was severely mistreated suffering nearly fatal beating which left him with a fractured skull.
Local people usually ignored the cinemas where German films were shown, but Polanski seemed little concerned by the propaganda and often went to the movies. As the war progressed, Poland became increasingly war-torn and he lived his life as a tramp, hiding in barns and forests, eating whatever he could steal or find. Still under 12 years old, he encountered some Nazi soldiers who forced him to hold targets while they shot at them. At the war's end in 1945, he reunited with his father who sent him to a technical school, but young Polanski seemed to have already chosen another career. In the 1950s, he took up acting, appearing in Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955) before studying at the Lodz Film School. His early shorts such as Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), Le gros et le maigre (1961) and Mammals (1962), showed his taste for black humor and interest in bizarre human relationships. His feature debut, Knife in the Water (1962), was one of the first Polish post-war films not associated with the war theme. It was also the first movie from Poland to get an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. Though already a major Polish filmmaker, Polanski chose to leave the country and headed to France. While down-and-out in Paris, he befriended young scriptwriter, Gérard Brach, who eventually became his long-time collaborator. The next two films, Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-sac (1966), made in England and co-written by Brach, won respectively Silver and then Golden Bear awards at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 1968, Polanski went to Hollywood, where he made the psychological thriller, Rosemary's Baby (1968). However, after the brutal murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson Family in 1969, the director decided to return to Europe. In 1974, he again made a US release - it was Chinatown (1974).
It seemed the beginning of a promising Hollywood career, but after his conviction for the sodomy of a 13-year old girl, Polanski fled from he USA to avoid prison. After Tess (1979), which was awarded several Oscars and Cesars, his works in 1980s and 1990s became intermittent and rarely approached the caliber of his earlier films. It wasn't until The Pianist (2002) that Polanski came back to full form. For that movie, he won nearly all the most important film awards, including the Oscar for Best Director, Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, the BAFTA and Cesar Award.
He still likes to act in the films of other directors, sometimes with interesting results, as in A Pure Formality (1994).- Writer
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Born in Lvov, Ukraine; then he moved with his father Miroslaw Zulawski to Czechoslovakia and later to Poland. In the late 1950s, he studied cinema in France. In the 1960s, he was an assistant of the famous Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. His feature debut The Third Part of the Night (1971) was an adaptation of his father's novel. His second feature The Devil (1972) was prohibited in Poland, and Zulawski went to France. After the success of his French debut That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) in 1975, he returned to Poland where he spent two years in making On the Silver Globe (1988). The work on this film was brutally interrupted by the authorities. After that, Zulawski moved to France where became known for his highly artistic, controversial, and very violent films. Zulawski is well known for his ability to discover and "rediscover" actresses. Romy Schneider, Isabelle Adjani and Sophie Marceau played their best parts in his films.- Director
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Márta Mészáros was born on 19 September 1931 in Budapest, Hungary. She is a director and writer, known for Adoption (1975), Diary for My Children (1984) and Diary for My Lovers (1987). She was previously married to Miklós Jancsó, Laszlo Karda and Jan Nowicki.- Director
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Andrzej Wajda is an Academy Award-winning director. He is the most prominent filmmaker in Poland known for The Promised Land (1975), Man of Iron (1981), and Katyn (2007).
He was Born on March 6, 1926, in Suwalki, Poland. His mother, Aniela Wajda, was a teacher at a Ukrainian school. His father, Jakub Wajda, was a captain in the Polish infantry. Wajda described his childhood as a happy pastoral country life before the Second World War. In 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. In 1940, Wajda's father was killed by Stalin's agents in the Katyn massacre.
Young Wajda survived the Second World War with his mother and his brother in Nazi-occupied Poland. In 1942, Wajda joined the Polish resistance and served in the Armia Krajowa until the war ended in 1945. In 1946 he moved to Kraków. There Wajda went to Academy of Fine Arts. He studied painting, particularly the impressionist and post-impressionist painting, and was especially fond of Paul Cezanne. From 1950-1954 he studied film directing at the High Film School in Lódz under directors Jerzy Toeplitz and Aleksander Ford. Later, Wajda described the influential and eye-opening experience from seeing French avant-garde films, like Ballet mécanique (1924) by artist-director Fernand Léger.
In 1955 he made his debut as director of full-length A Generation (1955), about the generation of youth coming of age during the Nazi occupation of Poland. His award-winning Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958) concluded the trilogy about life in Poland during WWII. Although he was under pressure from the Soviet-dominated Polish authorities, Wajda positioned himself as an artist who was above the conflict. He still managed to show the undeclared civil war between two anti-Nazi Polish forces, which were divided by political ideology: the Polish communists and the partisans - folk heroes of the Home Army.
His Oscar-nominated The Promised Land (1975) was a work of multi-layered allegory and Symbolism. Wajda's witty depiction of the 19th century capitalism in Poland actually alluded to the contemporary Communist politics. The shooting of workers in the final scenes was actually unmasking of the official politics of killing workers in the Soviet Union in 1962, under Nikita Khrushchev, and in Poland a few years later. The story of a film student who traces the life of defamed "hero" in Man of Marble (1977) was a deconstruction of the false impressions that official propaganda was using to brainwash the public. The same main characters in Man of Iron (1981) continued unmasking the Communist regime's manipulations against working class people. In 1981, Wajda joined the "Solidarity" labor movement of Lech Walesa.
From 1989 to 1991 Wajda was elected Senator of the Republic of Poland. From 1992 to 1994 he was Member of Presidential Council for Culture. In 1994 he founded the Center of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków, and was awarded the Order of Rising Sun in Japan (1995). Wajda was President of Polish Film Association (1978-1983). He was Member of "Solidarity" Lech Walesa Council (1981-1989). He won an honorary Oscar (2000) for his contribution to cinema, and an honorary Golden Bear (2006) at the Berlin Film Festival.
Wajda's Katyn (2007) was nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year in 2008, and received many other awards and nominations. The film shows historic events in Katyn during WWII, where Wajda's father was among thousands of Polish officers killed by Soviet communists under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Wajda's film was well received by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who initially opened the facts about Katyn to help people understand each other and overcome the tragic past.
"We never hoped to live to see the fall of the Soviet Union, to see Poland as a free country", said Andrzej Wajda.- Director
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Feliks Falk was born on 25 February 1941 in Stanislawów, Stanislawowskie, Poland [now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine]. He is a director and writer, known for Joanna (2010), Komornik (2005) and Bohater roku (1987).- Director
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Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in Mittelbau-Dora, a sub camp of Buchenwald, and his mother died in Auschwitz, at which Milos became an orphan very early on. He studied screen-writing at the Prague Film Academy (F.A.M.U.). In his Czechoslovakian films, Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965), and The Firemen's Ball (1967), he created his own style of comedy. During the invasion of his country by the troops of the Warsaw pact in the summer of 1968, to stop the Prague spring, he left Europe for the United States. In spite of difficulties, he filmed Taking Off (1971) there and achieved his fame later with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) adapted from the novel of Ken Kesey, which won five Oscars, including one for best direction. Other important films of Milos Forman were the musical Hair (1979) and his biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus (1984), which won eight Oscars.- Director
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István Szabó was the first director to bring home to Hungary the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie receiving the award was his 1981 film Mephisto. In January 2006, it became public that he had been an agent of the III/III department, a former communist agency of interior intelligence. After the revolution in 1956, he was blackmailed and forced to cooperate, though later he was considered willingly cooperative. Allegedly, he wrote reports about fellow Hungarian directors, actors, and actresses such as Miklós Jancsó, Mari Töröcsik, Károly Mécs. Szabó has never denied the charges and considers his agent work heroic and needful, claiming he saved the life of a friend sentenced to death for his involvement in the revolution of 1956.- Director
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Dusan Makavejev is the premier figure in Yugoslavian film history; his films are deeply rooted in his nation's painful postwar experiences and draw on important Yugoslavian cinematic and cultural models. Makavejev's work has violated many political and sexual taboos and invited censorship in dozens of nations. In the 1950s, after studying psychology at Belgrade University, Makavejev became involved in the activities of various film societies and festivals and studied direction at the Academy for Radio, Television and Film. As early as 1953, he began making short films and documentaries and would work in various capacities at both the Zagreb and Avala studios during the late 50s and early 60s. The documentary impulse remains powerful in Makavejev's work, as does the tendency to intercut undigested segments from other films into longer works.
Makavejev enjoyed great critical success with his first three features, Man Is Not a Bird (1965), "Love Affair" (1967) and Innocence Unprotected (1968). Highly allegorical and relying on techniques derived from Brecht and influenced by Godard, these films were sardonic and anarchistic views of Eastern European state socialist milieus.
Much of Makavejev's work has been uncompromisingly experimental as well as politically outrageous. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) is the best example of this combination and is the director's most influential work to date. Much of the film is composed of a documentary Makavejev researched in the late 1960s while in the US on a Ford Foundation grant and which was eventually financed by German TV. A witty, passionate, and often rambling account of pioneering psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and his American disciples, the material is intercut with a fictitious political-sexual allegory set in contemporary Belgrade. The film was instantly banned in Yugoslavia and made Makavejev persona non grata in his native country until the late 1980s.
Sweet Movie (1974) was made in Canadian exile, with some production resources furnished by the National Film Board of Canada. Also a disjointed, two-part narrative, it again focuses on radical techniques in sexual psychotherapy, here played out rather than verbalized. Intertwined is yet another acidic, allegorical fable of the decay of Yugoslavia's socialist legacy. Extremely violent and sexually explicit, "Sweet Movie" was dismissed (and censored) as pornography in many countries, and added to Makavejev's reputation as a "filmmaker maudit."
Montenegro (1981) has been Makavejev's greatest financial success to date. Political commentary and formal experimentation are subordinated to narrative drive in this story of a housewife (Susan Anspach) who grapples with sexual liberation and fails.
The Coca-Cola Kid (1985), Makavejev's second major international co-production, was marred by on-set squabbles between actors, and the rejection of Makavejev's intriguing plan to use a long reel of multilingual Coca-Cola commercials as a narrative structuring device. What emerged was a genuinely erotic film which takes a quirky, satiric view both of its Australian setting and the international business world.
Makavejev's long exile from his homeland ended in 1988 with the release of Manifesto (1988), a Ruritanian political farce mostly shot in Yugoslavia. Although the film marks the most disciplined, traditional storytelling of Makavejev's career, it has seen only limited bookings in the US. Also little seen was his follow-up Gorilla Bathes at Noon (1993), a political comedy based on the adventures of a Russian soldier as he wanders around Berlin.
Profession(s): director, screenwriter, professor, essayist Sometimes Credited As: Sam Rotterdam
Family wife: Bojana Marijan (married in 1964; has worked with Makavejev)
Education Academy of Theater, Radio, Film and Television Belgrade, Yugoslavia Belgrade University Belgrade, Yugoslavia psychology 1955.- Director
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Born in 1939 in Warsaw, Poland. Documentary and feature film director. Studied physics at Warsaw University and philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Cracow. Graduated from Lodz Film Academy in 1966. Amateur film maker. His school diploma film 'Death of a Provincial' (Smierc prowincjala (1968)) won an awards in Venice, Mannheim, Valladolid and Moscow in 1967. Other early films made for TV include: 'Next Door' (_Za sciana (1971)_), Grand Prix in San Remo; 'Hypothesis' (Hipoteza (1973)).
Scriptwriter or co-writer of all of his TV and cinema films. Other early feature films: 'Structure of a Crystal' (The Structure of Crystal (1969)), which won in Mar del Plata 1970; 'Family Life' (Zycie rodzinne (1971)), which won in Chicago 1971, Valladolid 1972 and Colombo 1973; 'Illumination' (The Illumination (1973)), Grand Prix in Locarno 1973, award in Gdansk 1974; 'Quarterly Balance' (A Woman's Decision (1975)); 'Camouflage' (Camouflage (1977)), Spiral (The Spiral (1978)).- Director
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Ivan Passer was one of the key authors of the "new wave" of Czech cinema, a group of young people who forged an energetic and transgressive film movement in the 1960s, breaking away from the precepts of hard socialist realism. Passer was not only the author of the scenarios of his own films, but he also worked on the scripts of the first four motion pictures made by his countryman, friend and colleague Milos Forman: "Konkurs" (1963), "Black Petr" ( 1964), "Loves of a Blonde" (1965) and "The Firemen's Ball" (1967).
Passer was born in Prague, the son of Marianna (Mandelíková) and Alois Passer. He was the grandson of a silent movie screenwriter. Ivan's parents were persecuted by the Nazis for their Jewish heritage. Ivan was a rebel boy, sent to a boarding school where he became friends with Milos. Together they went to study cinema at the FAMU film school in Prague, but young Ivan was eventually expelled from the academy. By then he had acquired skills in movie-making, some experience and had key friends, such as cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek. With Forman and other friends, they made their first movies.
In 1965 Passer made a remarkable first feature, the beautiful "Intimate Lighting", a film of impressionist inspiration that immediately established his name as a promising new director. But the social pressures and political unrest in Czechoslovakia, which culminated in 1968 with the Soviet invasion, led him into exile the following year. However, in the United States he did not achieve the notoriety of Forman, who received the best proposals, while he rejected offers that did not convince him: for example, he refused to make "Yentl" for a number of reasons, including his conviction that Barbra Streisand was too old and famous for the role, in opposition to other key performers as Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving. Likewise, he refused to make films with elements of violence, which he always opposed. During World War II he had been directly exposed to violence, and he believed that it was dangerous to represent it in films: violence, he said, affects "some people who are not able to realize the difference between reality and fantasy."
However, he made some worthy movies, such as his American debut "Born to Win" (1971), a complex portrait of a heroin-addict hairdresser; his satire on civil surveillance, "Law and Disorder" (1974); the comedy about money-laundering bankers "Silver Bears" (1977), and the cult film "Cutter's Way" (1981), in which a war veteran investigates a crime, despite he only has one eye, one arm and one leg. For television he directed the biopic "Stalin" in 1992.
Passer taught film at the University of Southern California, and lectured students in foreign film academies. He died in Reno, Nevada, on January 9, 2020.- Actor
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Born in Lódz, Poland, in 1938. Director, playwright, scriptwriter, and actor. Graduated in ethnology, literature and history from Warsaw University in 1959. Graduated from Lódz Film Academy in directing in 1962. Feature debut: _Identification Marks - None_ (Rysopis, 1964, scr., dir, act.), awarded in Warsaw 1964 and Arnhem 1965. Other films: _Walkover_ (Walkower, 1965, scr., act.), awarded in Mannheim; _The Barrier_ (Bariera, 1966, scr.), awarded in Bergamo 1966 and Valladolid 1968; _Le Depart_ (1967, scr., belg. prod.), Grand Prix in Wets Berlin); _Dialogue 20-40-60_ (Dialog 20-40-60, 1968, scr. - Polish part of "The Twenty Years Olds", czech. prod.); _Hands Up!_ (Rece do gory!, 1967)- Director
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Miloslav Luther was born on 14 August 1945 in Jakub, Czechoslovakia [now: Banská Bystrica. Slovakia]. He is a director and writer, known for Angel of Mercy (1993), Vergeßt Mozart (1985) and Tango s komármi (2009).- Director
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Having graduated from FAMU in Prague film (1971), Agnieszka Holland returned to Poland and began her film career working with Krzysztof Zanussi as assistant director, and Andrzej Wajda as her mentor. Her first feature film was PROVINCIAL ACTORS (1978), one of the flagship pictures of the "cinema of moral disquiet" and the winner of the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980. Subsequently, she made the films FEVER (1980) and THE LONELY WOMAN (1981). In 1981, just before the declaration of the state of emergency in Poland, Agnieszka Holland emigrated to France.
She directed ANGRY HARVEST (1985) which was nominated for a foreign-language Oscar. Her film EUROPA EUROPA (1990) also received a U.S. Academy Award nomination (best screenplay) and IN DARKNESS (2011) was again nominated as best foreign-language film. She also collaborated with her friend Krzysztof Kieslowski on the screenplay of his trilogy, THREE COLOURS (1993).
Holland's other films include TO KILL A PRIEST (1988), OLIVIER, OLIVIER (1992), THE SECRET GARDEN (1993), TOTAL ECLIPSE (1995), WASHINGTON SQUARE (1997), THE THIRD MIRACLE (1999), SHOT IN THE HEART (2001), JULIE WALKING HOME (2001), COPYING BEETHOVEN (2006), IN DARKNESS (2011), BURNING BUSH (2013), SPOOR (2017), MR. JONES (2019) and CHARLATAN (2020). She also directed several episodes of many notable TV series, including THE WIRE, JAG, COLD CASE, TREME (for the pilot of the latter she was nominated for an Emmy) and HOUSE OF CARDS. Agnieszka Holland has also written or co-written screenplays for films made by other directors and directed plays for Polish television. She was elected chairwoman of the Board of the European Film Academy in 2014 and was elected as its President in 2021.- Writer
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Krzysztof Kieslowski graduated from Lódz Film School in 1969, and became a documentary, TV and feature film director and scriptwriter. Before making his first film for TV, Przejscie podziemne (1974) (The Underground Passage), he made a number of short documentaries. His next TV title, Personnel (1975) (The Staff), took the Grand Prix at Mannheim Film Festival. His first full-length feature was The Scar (1976) (The Scar). In 1978 he made the famous documentary From a Night Porter's Point of View (1979) (Night Porter's Point of View), and in 1979 - a feature Camera Buff (1979) (Camera Buff), which was acclaimed in Poland and abroad. Everything he did from that point was of highest artistic quality.- Director
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After studying at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950s, Jan Svankmajer started working as a theatre director, chiefly in association with the Theatre of Masks and the Black Theatre. He first experimented with film-making after becoming involved with the multimedium productions of Prague's Lanterna Magika Theatre. He began making short films in 1964, and continued working in the same medium for over twenty years, when he finally achieved his long-held ambition to make a feature film based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Alice (1988)). He has also exhibited his drawings, collages and 'tactile sculptures', many of which were produced in the mid-1970s, when he was temporarily banned from film-making by the Czech authorities. He has been a card-carrying member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969.- Director
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Ildikó Enyedi was born on 15 November 1955 in Budapest, Hungary. She is a director and writer, known for On Body and Soul (2017), Simon, the Magician (1999) and My Twentieth Century (1989).- Director
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Otar Iosseliani was born on 2 February 1934 in Tiflis, Transcaucasian SFSR, USSR [now Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia]. He was a director and writer, known for La chasse aux papillons (1992), Winter Song (2015) and Et la lumière fut (1989). He died on 17 December 2023 in Tbilisi, Georgia.- Writer
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Andrei Ujica was born in 1951 in Timisoara, Romania. He is a writer and director, known for The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010), Out of the Present (1996) and Videograms of a Revolution (1992).- Director
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Peter Medak is a Hungarian-born British film director. Born in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the Warsaw Bloc, Medak fled to England at the age of 18 during the bloody uprising against the Soviet regime. He began his career with associated British Picture Corporation in Borehamwood. He studied and worked his way through by being an assistant editor, assistant cameraman and eventually a 3rd, 2nd and 1st assistant director on many British films of the late 1950s and early 196Os.
Medak worked with some of the most legendary British film directors, including, among others, Sir Carol Reed, David Lean, Anthony Asquith, and Fred Zimmerman. He was signed in 1963 by Universal Studios in Hollywood where for the first six months he the chance to observe Alfred Hitchcock and many others. He began directing television in Hollywood and in London. In 1967, he signed with Paramount Studios where he finally achieved his dream and directed his first feature film called Negatives (1968), featuring Glenda Jackson in her film appearance.
He then proceeded making two highly acclaimed black comedies: The Ruling Class (1972), and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972) (for which he received an Academy Award nomination). Since then he has directed many feature films on both sides of the Atlantic. In recent years, he made The Krays, which won him The Evening Standard Award for Best Director in England. Later films which he directed include: Let Him Have It, Romeo is Bleeding, The Men's Club, etc.- Director
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Milcho Manchevski's acclaimed Before the Rain is considered "one of the greatest debut feature films in the history of cinema" (Annette Insdorf) and "one of the most important films of the decade" (Ann Kibbey). The New York Times included it on its list "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". It won the Golden Lion in Venice, Independent Spirit, an Academy Award nomination and 30 other awards.
"Manchevski continues down his distinctive artistic path" (Hollywood Reporter) with the award-winning features Dust (which opened Venice 2001), Shadows, Mothers, Bikini Moon, Willow, the short forms The End of Time, Thursday, Macedonia Timeless, 1.73, Arrested Development's Tennessee and an episode of HBO's The Wire. "His work stands out in world cinema for its unique way of playing with space, time and emotion" (Keith Brown).
Roger Ebert said, "Work like this keeps me going. A reminder of the nobility that film can attain." "His unique blend of experimentation, poetry, emotion, and a demand for the active participation of the viewer in the construction of meaning are highly praised." (Conor McGrady). His work is part of the curricula at numerous universities and is the subject of many essays and books.
Milcho Manchevski wrote and directed the feature films Willow (2019), Bikini Moon (2017), Mothers (2010), Shadows (2007), Dust (2001), Before the Rain (1994) and over 50 short forms, including The End of Time (2017), Thursday (2013), 1.73 (1984) and the music video Tennessee (1991) for Arrested Development. He has also been a director on HBO's The Wire (2002). He had three solo exhibitions of photographs, published works of fiction, books of photographs and staged performance art.
Before the Rain won an Academy-Award nomination and thirty awards, including Golden Lion for Best Film in Venice, Independent Spirit, FIPRESCI, UNESCO, best film of the year in Argentina, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, and other awards in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, etc. The New York Times included Before the Rain on its list of the best 1,000 films ever made.
All of Manchevski's films were widely screened at international film festivals. Dust was the opening film of the Venice Film Festival. Willow, Shadows and Mothers were the Macedonian Academy Awards entries. Willow and Mothers were selected among the 40 European films of the year by the European Film Academy committee. Willow opened at the Rome Film Festival and subsequently won five festival awards. Mothers screened in the Panorama section of Berlinale, later winning seven festival awards.
Manchevski also won awards for his shorts Thursday (2013) and The End of Time (2017), best experimental film (for 1.73), best MTV video (for Tennessee, which The Rolling Stone placed on the list of the 100 best videos ever), and best commercial (for Macedonia Timeless (2009)).
His films are part of the curricula at numerous universities worldwide, and have been discoursed at a number of conferences. The University of Leipzig (Germany) and the European University Institute in Florence (Italy) hosted academic conferences dedicated, respectively, to Before the Rain and Dust.
He has published fiction, essays and op-ed pieces in Journal of Screenwriting, New American Writing, La Repubblica, Corriere Della Sera, Sineast, The Guardian, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Pravda, etc. Manchevski has staged performance art with the group 1AM (which he founded) and by himself.
He has published a (very small) book of fiction, The Ghost of My Mother (1985), a short book on art theory Truth and Fiction: Notes on (Exceptional) Faith in Art (2012), a book of photographs and essays Pictures, Words and Lies (2015) and three books of photographs, Street (1999), Five Drops of Dream (2010) and There (2020) which accompany the three solo photo exhibitions.
He taught and served as Head of Directing Studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' Graduate Film program. He has also taught and lectured at a number of universities, cinematheques, art museums and art institutes: Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College, EICTV (Cuba), VGIK (Russia), London Film School, Oxford Brookes, Cambridge, University of Chicago, University of Texas (Austin), Brown University, FDU (Belgrade), Shanghai Normal University, Hanoi Cinematheque, University of Tsukuba (Japan), University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (the German state film school), Universität Bielefeld, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), etc.
Manchevski's work has screened at more than four hundred festivals, and has been distributed in more than 60 countries (theatrically, TV, cable, streaming and video).
He holds an honorary doctorate from VGIK in Moscow, Russia. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America, European Film Academy and the PEN Club.
He has served on festival juries in Venice, Shanghai, Warsaw, Locarno, Teheran, Vilnius, Pula, Montenegro, FEST (Belgrade), Munich, Rostov-on-Don, Hainan, etc.- Director
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A Serbian film director. Born in 1954 in Sarajevo. Graduated in film directing at the prestigious Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague in 1978. During his studies, he was awarded several times for his short movies including Guernica (1978), which took first prize at the Student's Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. After graduation, he directed several TV movies in his hometown, Sarajevo. In collaboration with the screenwriter Abdulah Sidran in 1981, he made the successful feature debut Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981) which won the Silver Lion for best first feature at the Venice Film Festival. Their subsequent work, human political drama When Father Was Away on Business (1985) unanimously won top prize at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival as well as FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar. In 1989 he won the Best Director award at Cannes for Time of the Gypsies (1988), a film about the life of a gypsy family in Yugoslavia scripted by Gordan Mihic. His first English language movie, Arizona Dream (1993) starring Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway and scripted by his USA student, David Atkins was awarded the Silver Bear at the 1993 Berlin Film Festival. Underground (1995), a bitter surrealistic comedy about the Balkans, scripted by Dusan Kovacevic, won him a second Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995.- Cinematographer
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Miroslav Janek was born on 3 January 1954 in Náchod, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Nespatrené (1996), Obcan Havel (2008) and Normální autisticky film (2016). He is married to Tonicka Janková.- Director
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Born in Budapest, he saw his parents taken away to a concentration camp when he was 5. Hidden by a Catholic family, he met his parents after the war (who surprisingly survived the camps). During the Hungarian revolution in 1956, he moved to Paris where he worked as an assistant camera operator and a cameraman. He began directing in 1959.- Producer
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Béla Tarr was born on 21 July 1955 in Pécs, Hungary. He is a producer and director, known for Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Turin Horse (2011) and Satantango (1994). He is married to Ágnes Hranitzky.- Director
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Jan Hrebejk was born on 27 June 1967 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He is a director and writer, known for Divided We Fall (2000), Beauty in Trouble (2006) and Cosy Dens (1999).- Editor
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Ágnes Hranitzky was born on 4 July 1945 in Derecske, Hungary. She is an editor, known for The Turin Horse (2011), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) and The Man from London (2007). She is married to Béla Tarr.- Director
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Danis Tanovic was born on 20 February 1969 in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia. He is a director and writer, known for No Man's Land (2001), An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (2013) and Cirkus Columbia (2010).- Director
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Gela Babluani was born in Tblisi in Georgia. He is the son of the prominent director Temur Babluani. At 17 years of age, he and his three siblings were sent to study in France. His first short film, A Fleur de Peau (2002), received critical appraise. His first feature length film is 13 Tzameti, won the World Cinema Jury Prize for a Dramatic motion picture at the Sundance Film Festival.- Director
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Cristi Puiu was born on 3 April 1967 in Bucharest, Romania. He is a director and writer, known for Aurora (2010), Sieranevada (2016) and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005). He has been married to Anca Puiu since 21 April 1998. They have three children.- Director
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György Pálfi was born on 11 April 1974 in Budapest, Hungary. He is a director and writer, known for Taxidermia (2006), Hukkle (2002) and Free Fall (2014).- Writer
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Jasmila Zbanic was born on 19 December 1974 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia. She is a writer and director, known for Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020), Grbavica (2006) and Na putu (2010). She is married to Damir Ibrahimovic. They have one child.- Producer
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Cristian Mungiu was born on 27 April 1968 in Iasi, Romania. He is a producer and writer, known for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), Graduation (2016) and Beyond the Hills (2012).- Director
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Andrzej Jakimowski was born on 17 August 1963 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland. He is a director and writer, known for Imagine (2012), Zmruz oczy (2002) and Sztuczki (2007).- Director
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Cristian Nemescu was born on 31 March 1979 in Bucharest, Romania. He was a director and writer, known for California Dreamin' (2007), Marilena from P7 (2006) and Poveste la scara 'C' (2003). He died on 24 August 2006 in Bucharest, Romania.- Director
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Sergei Dvortsevoy was born on 18 August 1962 in Chimkent, Chimkent Oblast, Kazakh SSR, USSR [now Shymkent, South Kazakhstan Region, Kazakhstan]. He is a director and writer, known for Ayka (2018), Bread Day (1998) and Tulpan (2008).- Actor
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Horatiu Malaele is a Romanian actor and film director born on August 1st 1952 in Targu-Jiu. He graduated the Theater and Cinematography Art Institute in the year 1975. Horatiu Malaele became renowned for his theater plays, which he directed, but also for his characters in Romanian comedy movies. Through his career, he won several awards for his parts in movies like "Tinerete fara batranete", "Sluga la doi stapan", "Muntele", "Eulenspiegel" etc.
Beside his movies and theater plays, Horatiu Malaele took up writing with his auto-biography book "Horatiu despre Malaele" and later, in 2012, publishing the novel "Rataciri" (Wanders).- Director
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Javor Gardev (born 1972, Sofia) holds a MPhil degree in Philosophy from Sofia University, and a M.F.A. in Directing from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. One of the foremost directors of his native Bulgaria, he has staged over forty-five performances, in his home country and abroad, which were presented in Sofia, Berlin, Paris, Lille, Bern, Gdansk, Moscow, St.Petersburg, Lisbon, Rotterdam, and Utrecht, to name a few. Among the plays he has staged are: William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "King Lear", Edward Albee's "The Play about the Baby" and "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" (personally endorsed by Mr. Albee), Heiner Müller's "Quartet', Jean Genet's "The Maids", Peter Weiss's "Marat/Sade", Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman" and "A Behanding in Spokane", Tracy Letts's "Killer Joe", Ethan Coen's "Almost an Evening". His feature film debut Zift (2008) won nineteen domestic and international awards and special mentions. Javor Gardev won "Silver St. George" for Best Director in Main Competition at the 30th Moscow IFF. Zift (2008) was part of the selections of fifty-four different International Film Festivals including Toronto IFF, 2008 (Official Selection, Discovery). It was Bulgaria's official submission for the 2008 'Best Foreign Language Picture' Academy Award category and part of the Official Selection for the European Film Academy Awards, 2008. Until 2009 it was the highest grossing Bulgarian Feature film for the last two decades. Since 2009 Javor Gardev is a member of the European Film Academy. Javor Gardev's works, even those with a deceptively simple set-up, invariably possess a multi-layered reflectiveness. His artistic language is unconventional and continuously innovative. Besides his prolific theatre work, Javor Gardev has directed radio-dramas and authored performance art and video art works.- Director
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Adrian Sitaru was born on 4 November 1971 in Deva, Romania. He is a director and writer, known for The Fixer (2016), Art (2014) and Counterpart (2014).- Writer
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Corneliu Porumboiu was born on 14 September 1975 in Vaslui, Romania. He is a writer and director, known for 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), The Whistlers (2019) and Police, Adjective (2009).- Producer
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Florin Serban was born in 1975 in Resita, Romania. He studied Philosophy and has an MA in Philosophy of Culture and Hermeneutics from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. He studied film directing in Bucharest at U.N.A.T.C, received a BFA, and later moved to the US. He graduated from Columbia University in NYC with an MFA in Film Directing. With his first feature film, "If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle", he received Grand Jury Prize at 2010 Berlinale together with Alfred Bauer Prize for Innovation in Cinema.- Director
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Bujar Alimani is one of the most prolific and important writer/directors of the New Albanian Cinema.
Since his start as a filmmaker with an extraordinary series of avant-garde short films, KATOI (The Kennel), GAS, BUSULLA (The Compass) and NJE HISTORY DASHURIE (A Love Story), Bujar's work has been garlanded with praise for its wild imagination mixed with gritty realism. Nominated for the Oscars twice, Bujar's work has been featured at every major film festival worldwide including Sundance and Berlin, he's received countless international film festival awards for critically acclaimed shorts and feature films worldwide, and his work's been presented at some of the most prestigious institutions internationally including MoMa in NYC, proving him as a significant art house hit.
Bujar began his foray into features films by writing and directing AMNISTIA (Amnesty), his first full-length feature film recognized by the critics as a masterpiece. He won the CICAE award at The Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival) and participated in 80 additional film festivals around the globe of which he won 13 additional awards. This success culminated in 2012, when AMNISTIA was officially selected to represent Albania at the Oscars, which led it to be honored at MoMA (Museum of Modern Arts) in New York City.
Following the success of AMNISTIA, Bujar's second feature film KROM (Chromium) premiered at Karlovy Vary film festival (Czech Republic) and then went on to participate in 18 international festivals worldwide, once again winning several awards. Just as AMNISTIA, KROM then also went on to represent Albania in the foreign language category at the Academy Awards 2016.
While shooting his next feature film, THE DELEGATION, Bujar found time to pursue his passion and shoot a one-of-a-kind indie short with MISSING EARRING, a buzz-worthy presence among producers and investors at the Sundance and Tribeca festivals.
In 2018, Bujar's rise as a player in the indie film circuit was further cemented when his documentary ZOIS was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Director at the Queens World Film Festival.
Following this achievement, Bujar formally announced his next two projects, SNOW and ESCORTS, both gritty indie feature films in the vein of Scorsese and Tarantino.- Director
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Sergei Loznitsa, Ukrainian film maker, was born on September, 5th 1964 in Baranovichi, USSR. He grew up in Kiev, and in 1987 graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic with a degree in Applied Mathematics. In 1987-1991 Sergei worked as a scientist at the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics, specializing in artificial intelligence research. He also worked as a translator from Japanese. In 1997 Loznitsa graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, where he studied feature film making. Loznitsa has been making documentary films since 1996 and is the author of 21 documentaries, as well as 4 feature films. In 2013 Sergei Loznitsa launched a film production and distribution company ATOMS & VOID. Currently working in both documentary and feature genres.- Director
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Benedek Fliegauf was born on 15 August 1974 in Budapest, Hungary. He is a director and writer, known for Just the Wind (2012), Womb (2010) and Dealer (2004).- Director
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Srdan Golubovic was born on 24 August 1972 in Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia. He is a director and producer, known for Absolute Hundred (2001), Father (2020) and The Trap (2007).- Producer
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Calin Peter Netzer was born on the 1st May 1975 in Petrosani [Petroschen], Romania. His family belongs to the Transylvanian Saxons, a cultural minority of German descent who lives since generations in Romania. He was raised mainly in Cluj [Klausenburg]. Netzer's father was a dentist and emigrated to West-Germany in 1981, while Netzer's mother and he himself followed in 1983. He went to school in Stuttgart, but returned to Romania after the revolution in December 1989. From 1994 to 1999 Netzer studied at the 'National University of Theatre and Film I.L. Caragiale (UNATC)' in Bucharest and graduated with a diploma in film direction. Netzer directed multiple award-winning short films before his feature film debut Maria (2003) won the 'Special Prize of the Jury', 'Best Actor' and 'Best Actress' at the 'Locarno International Film Festival' 2003 among many other awards. His next feature Medalia de onoare (2009) received the Silver Alexander award, the FIPRESCI prize and the awards for 'Best Screenplay' and 'Best Actor' at the 'Thessaloniki International Film Festival' in 2009 among many other honors. In 2013 his third feature Child's Pose (2013), which was directed, written and produced by Netzer and shot digitally on a low budget, was invited into the 'Official Competition' of the 'Berlin International Film Festival' where it won the 'Golden Bear' award and the FIPRESCI prize. It was the first Romanian film to win the top award of the Berlinale and internationally celebrated as a new masterpiece of the Romanian New Wave.- Director
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Zaza Urushadze was born on 30 October 1965 in Tbilisi, Georgia. He was a director and writer, known for Tangerines (2013), Ak tendeba (1998) and The Confession (2017). He died on 7 December 2019 in Tbilisi, Georgia.- Actor
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Kornél Mundruczó was born on 3 April 1975 in Gödöllõ, Hungary. He is an actor and director, known for Jupiter's Moon (2017), White God (2014) and Pieces of a Woman (2020). He is married to Kata Wéber.- Director
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Stephan Komandarev is a Bulgarian director, producer and scriptwriter. Born in 1966 in Sofia. He graduated in Film & TV directing at the New Bulgarian University (1999).
Stephan Komandarev's latest feature film "Directions" is a nominee in the section "Un certain regard" at the Cannes Film Festival 2017 official selection. His previous works include award-winning feature and documentary films, such as: The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner (2008 - the first Bulgarian film, shortlisted for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2010), the most world-wide theatrical released Bulgarian film ever, distributed in 93 countries, won 35 awards at international film festivals); The Judgment (2014) (won 12 awards, Bulgarian entry - Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film - 2016); The Town of Badante Women (2009, doc.), Alphabet of Hope (2003, doc.), Bread over the Fence (2002, doc.), Dog's Home (1999, feature).
Stephan Komandarev is 2011 EAVE graduate and Member of the Bulgarian Film Directors' Association and Bulgarian Film Producers' Association. Member of the European Film Academy.- Actor
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Attila Till was born on 3 December 1971 in Budapest, Hungary. He is an actor and director, known for Kills On Wheels (2016), Beast (2011) and Panic (2008).- Director
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Petar Valchanov was born in 1982 in Plovdiv. He graduated from an Art School, Plovdiv in 2000. After that he graduated in Film Directing from National Academy for Theatre and Film At in classes of prof. Ludmil Staikov.. Together, Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva have directed the documentary Parable of Life (2009), the TV movie Forced Landing (2010). Recently they wrote and directed the short film Jump, which was nominated for the European Film Awards 2013 at Clermont-Ferrand ISFF 2013, making it the first Bulgarian short film ever nominated for EFA. Jump was also awarded with Grand Prix at Brussels SFF 2013, Excellence Award for Best Picture at Busan ISFF 2013, and Best Short Film by the Bulgarian Film Academy 2013, among others. The Lesson is their full-length debut film, having been selected at Toronto IFF (Contemporary World Cinema) and San Sebastian IFF (New Directors).- Director
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Kristina Grozeva graduated Sofia State University and worked as journalist for Bulgarian TV. After that she graduated from National Academy for Theater and Film Art (Sofia, Bulgaria) in Film Directing in classes of professor Georgi Djulgerov and associate professor Svetoslav Ovtcharov. Her student short films won several awards at International Student Film Festivals. Together, Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov have directed the documentary Parable of Life (2009), the TV movie Forced Landing (2010). Recently they wrote and directed the short film Jump, which was nominated for the European Film Awards 2013 at Clermont-Ferrand ISFF 2013, making it the first Bulgarian short film ever nominated for EFA. Jump was also awarded with Grand Prix at Brussels SFF 2013, Excellence Award for Best Picture at Busan ISFF 2013, and Best Short Film by the Bulgarian Film Academy 2013, among others. The Lesson is their full-length debut film, having been selected at Toronto IFF(Contemporary World Cinema) and San Sebastian IFF (New Directors).- Writer
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Ferenc Török was born on April 23, 1971 in Budapest, Hungary. He has received Béla Balázs Award, a state recognition for outstanding achievement in filmmaking. Török is a member of the European Film Academy. He is known for Moszkva tér (2001), Szezon (2004), Overnight, (2007), Isztambul (2011) and Senki szigete (2014). His latest film 1945 (2017) was premiered at Berlinale in February and since then was presented at several festivals. It won important prizes, included the Yad Vashem Award at Jerusalem IFF.- Director
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A literature and philosophy graduate, with extensive post-graduate work at Oxford on German literature, Polish-born Pawel Pawlikowski started as a documentary filmmaker in British television.
His second feature, Last Resort (2000), earned him international critical acclaim at numerous festivals, including Toronto and Sundance, and won the 2001 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for "Most Promising Newcomer in British Film."
His next film, My Summer of Love (2004), won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards in 2005.- Director
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László Nemes was born on 18th Feb. 1977 in Budapest, Hungary. He moved to France at 12 with his mother. He grew up in Paris, where he studied History, International Relations and Political Science at the Institut d'Études Politiques, because he couldn't go to film school. After that he started working as an assistant director on short films. With 26 he moved again to Budapest, Hungary and worked on short films there, where he met cinematographer Mátyás Erdély and sound designer Tamás Zányi. Together with them he finished his own 35mm short With a Little Patience (2007) in 2006. He subsequently studied from September 2006 on in a 'Film Directing' post-graduate program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He quit after less than a year, because he "did not like it", but met the poet Géza Röhrig during his time in New York. Frustrated with film school, he called director Béla Tarr: "I speak French and English, and I offered my services," said Nemes. He worked for two years as Tarr's assistant director, mostly on The Man from London (2007). In September 2007 his first short was presented at the Venice International Film Festival in competition and in Dec. 2008 it was nominated at the European Film Awards as 'Best Short Film'. Nemes shot his second short The Counterpart (2008) in Romania and after that The Gentleman Takes His Leave (2010) again in Hungary, finishing it in January 2010. The 3 short films have won more than 30 awards at more than 100 international film festivals. Nemes' first feature film project "S.K." was selected for the Résidence program which is overseen by the Cannes Cinéfondation. The resulting feature film Son of Saul (2015), with Géza Röhrig in the lead role, was surprisingly invited into the main competition and won the 'Grand Prix' at the 68th Cannes International Film Festival in 2015. Since then the film has become an international art house sensation and is Hungary's official submission for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category at the 88th Academy Awards.- Director
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Visar Morina was born in 1979 in Pristina, Kosovo, Yugoslavia. He is a director and writer, known for Exile (2020), Father (2015) and Death by Suffocation (2010).- Director
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Radu Jude is a Romanian film director and screenwriter. In 2003, he graduated from the Media University of Bucharest (Film Directing Department). Jude worked as an assistant director on Amen. (2002), directed by Costa-Gavras, and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), directed by Cristi Puiu. He directed several award-winning short films, among them Lampa cu caciula (2006) - the most successful Romanian short film ever, winner of Grand prizes at Sundance, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Grimstad, Hamburg, Bilbao, Huesca, Trieste, Montpellier, Cottbus, Aspen, IndieLisboa, Brussels, Mediawave, Kraków, Almería, Valencia, Uppsala and many more. Other shorts were selected by top festivals, including Clermont-Ferrand, San Francisco, Cottbus and Oberhausen, where Radu Jude won the Grand Prix. Jude directed over 100 advertising commercials. The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), his feature film debut, won the CICAE Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, the FIRESCI Prize at the Sofia International Film Festival, the Prize for Best Screenplay at the Bucharest International Film Festival and the FIPRESCI Prize at IndieLisboa. The film was selected in the ACID Programme at 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Everybody in Our Family (2012) received the 'Heart of Sarajevo' Award and the Bayard d'Or in Namur, among other awards. Radu Jude's acclaimed historical drama Aferim! (2015) premiered at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival where he won the Silver Bear award as 'Best Director'.- Producer
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Bogdan George Apetri is an European director, writer and producer based in New York City. As a writer and director, he is known for Outbound (2010), Unidentified (2020) and Miracle (2021). As a producer, he is known for 3 Backyards (2010), Advantageous (2015), Song Without a Name (2019) and Blaze (2018). His movies screened in Venice, Locarno, Cannes, Sundance, San Sebastian, Toronto and were distributed worldwide.