Paweł Pawlikowski


Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski is a Polish filmmaker, who has lived and worked most of his life in the United Kingdom. He garnered acclaim for a string of award-winning documentaries in the 1990s and for his feature films Last Resort and My Summer of Love, both of which won a BAFTA and many other European awards. His film Ida won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. At the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Pawlikowski won the Best Director prize for his 2018 film Cold War, a film which also earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film.

Early life

Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a father who was a doctor and a mother who started as a ballet dancer and later became an English literature professor at the University of Warsaw. In his late teens, he learned that his paternal grandmother was Jewish and had died in Auschwitz.
At the age of 14, he left communist Poland with his mother for London. What he thought was a holiday, turned out to be a permanent exile. A year later he moved to Germany, before finally settling in Britain in 1977. He studied literature and philosophy at Oxford University.

Career

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pawlikowski was best known for his documentaries, whose blend of lyricism and irony won him many fans and awards around the world. From Moscow to Pietushki was a poetic journey into the world of the Russian cult writer Venedikt Erofeev, for which he won an Emmy, an RTS award, a Prix Italia and other awards. The multi-award winning Dostoevsky's Travels was a tragi-comic road movie in which a St Petersburg tram driver—and the only living descendant of Fyodor Dostoevsky—travels rough around Western Europe haunting high-minded humanists, aristocrats, monarchists and the Baden-Baden casino in his quest to raise money to buy a secondhand Mercedes.
Pawlikowski's most original and formally successful film was Serbian Epics, made at the height of the Bosnian War. The oblique, ironic, imagistic, at times almost hypnotic study of epic Serbian poetry, with exclusive footage of Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić, aroused a storm of controversy and incomprehension at the time, but has now secured it something of a cult status. The absurdist Tripping with Zhirinovsky, a surreal boat journey down the Volga with controversial Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, won Pawlikowski the Grierson Award for the Best British Documentary in 1995.
Pawlikowski's transition to fiction occurred in 1998 with a small 50-minute hybrid film Twockers, a lyrical and gritty love story set on a sink estate in Yorkshire, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Ian Duncan. In 2001 he wrote and directed Last Resort with Dina Korzun and Paddy Considine, which won a BAFTA, the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film at Edinburgh and many other awards. In 2004 he wrote and directed My Summer of Love with Emily Blunt and Natalie Press, which won a BAFTA, the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film and many other awards.
In 2006, he filmed about 60% of his adaptation of Magnus Mills' The Restraint of Beasts when the project was halted—his wife had fallen gravely ill and he left to care for her and their children. In 2011, he wrote and directed a film loosely adapted from Douglas Kennedy's novel The Woman in the Fifth, starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas.
On 19 October 2013, his film Ida won the Best Film Award at the London Film Festival, on the same night that Anthony Chen, one of his students at the National Film and Television School, won the Sutherland Prize for the Best First Film, for Ilo Ilo. Ida won the 2015 Academy Award for Foreign Language Film on 23 February 2015, the first Polish film to do so. In the same year, he was a member of jury headed by Alfonso Cuarón at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.
In 2017, Pawlikowski adapted Emmanuel Carrère's biographical novel Limonov, based on the life of Eduard Limonov, into a screenplay. Pawlikowski planned to direct the film adaptation but revealed in 2020 that he lost interest in the character and abandoned plans to direct.
His most recent film, Cold War earned him the Best Director Award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. It also won five awards at the 2018 European Film Awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress Awards. In 2019, he was announced as one of the members of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Personal life

Pawlikowski grew up a Catholic and considers himself one up to this day, but says that he finds the Catholic Church in Great Britain to be easier to grow in faith in than that in Poland.
Pawlikowski was a Creative Arts Fellow at Oxford Brookes University from 2004 to 2007. He teaches film direction and screenwriting at the National Film School in the UK and the Wajda Film School in Warsaw. In addition to his native Polish, he speaks six languages including German and Russian.
Pawlikowski's wife developed a serious illness in 2006 and died several months later. They have a son and a daughter. After his children left for university, Pawlikowski moved to Paris, and later relocated to Warsaw, where he lives close to his childhood home. At the end of 2017, he married Polish model and actress Małgosia Bela.

Filmography

As a Director
YearTitleNotesRef.
1990From Moscow to Pietushki with Benny YerofeyevTV Movie Documentary
1991 Dostoevsky's TravelsTV Movie Documentary
1992 Serbian EpicsTV Movie Documentary
1994 Tripping with ZhirinovskyTV Movie Documentary
1998TwockersFeature Film
1998The StringerTV Movie Documentary
2000Last ResortFeature Film
2004My Summer of LoveFeature Film
2011The Woman in the FifthFeature Film
2013IdaFeature Film
2018Cold WarFeature Film
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Awards and Nominations

Academy Awards
YearAwardCategoryWorkResult
2014Academy AwardsBest Foreign Language FilmIda
2018Academy AwardsBest DirectorCold War
2018Academy AwardsBest Foreign Language FilmCold War

British Academy Film Awards
YearCategoryWorkResult
2001Best British FilmLast Resort
2001Most Promising NewcomerLast Resort
2005Best British FilmMy Summer of Love
2014Best Film Not in the English LanguageIda
2018Best DirectionCold War
2018Best Original ScreenplayCold War
2018Best Film Not in the English LanguageCold War

British Independent Film Awards
YearCategoryWorkResult
2000Best DirectorLast Resort
2000Best ScreenplayLast Resort
2004Best DirectorMy Summer of Love
2014BIFA Award for Best Foreign Independent FilmIda
2018BIFA Award for Best Foreign Independent FilmCold War

European Film Awards
YearCategoryWorkResult
199Best DocumentaryDostoyevsky’s Travels
2001European DiscoveryLast Resort
2005Best FilmMy Summer of Love
2005Best DirectorMy Summer of Love
2014Best FilmIda
2014People's Choice AwardIda
2014Best DirectorIda
2014Best ScreenwriterIda
2018Best FilmCold War
2018Best DirectorCold War
2018Best ScreenwriterCold War

Polish Film Awards
YearCategoryWorkResult
2006Best European FilmMy Summer of Love
2014Best FilmIda
2014Best DirectorIda
2014Best ScreenplayIda

Film festivals and other award ceremonies
YearAwardCategoryWorkResult
201338th National Polish Film FestivalGolden Lions for Best FilmIda
201430th Seattle International Film FestivalBest DirectorIda
201572nd Golden Globe AwardsBest Foreign Language FilmIda
201871st Cannes Film FestivalBest DirectorCold War
201843rd National Polish Film FestivalGolden Lions for Best FilmCold War
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Critics' Circle
YearAwardCategoryWorkResult
20149th Dublin Film Critics' Circle AwardsBest DirectorIda
2014Indiewire 2014 Year-End Critics PollBest DirectorIda
201939th London Film Critics' Circle AwardsBest DirectorCold War
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Other distinctions
Pawlikowski was made Honorary Associate of London Film School. In 2019, he was awarded the title of an honorary citizen of Warsaw.