Jerzy Skolimowski

Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist, actor and painter born on 5 May 1938. A screenwriter for Andrzej Wajda's Innocent Sorcerers (1960), Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his directorial debut The Menacing Eye (1960). He received the Golden Bear prize for his Belgian film The Departure (1967) and his other notable films include Deep End (1970). Skolimowski lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years, where he painted and occasionally acted in films, before returning to Poland and resuming his filmmaking career after a 17-year hiatus. In 2016, he received the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival. His film EO (2022) was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards. His early life was marked by wartime brutalities, with his father, a member of the Polish Resistance, executed by German Nazis. Post war, he studied ethnography, history and literature at college and took up boxing. His interest in jazz brought him in contact with actor Zbigniew Cybulski and directors Andrzej Munk and Roman Polanski.