Agnieszka Holland

Agnieszka Holland’s much-discussed film struck a political nerve with its Syrian families in the forest and swamps between Belarus and Poland, pushed west by one side and back east by the other. Stuhr, Ostaszewska and Kulesza head a cast of Polish stars, and it won the Special Jury Prize at Venice. — A Syrian family walks into the forest and swamps on the border between Belarus and Poland, believing it will be easy to get into Europe. Instead, Belarusian guards push them west, Polish guards send them back east, and it starts all over again. Jan is one of the border guards, while Julia has left a comfortable life behind to bring help into the forest. — Special Jury Prize | Venice Film Festival | 2023 Arca Cinema Giovani Award Best Film | Venice Film Festival | 2023 Premio CinemaSarà Award | Venice Film Festival | 2023 Green Drop Award | Venice Film Festival | 2023 Audience Award - Best International Feature | Chicago International Film Festival | 2023 Best Film | Polish Film Festival | 2024 Audience Award | Rotterdam Film Festival | 2024

Agnieszka Holland looks at losing faith and needing it, with Ed Harris as a miracle killer, a priest paid by the Church to debunk supposed apparitions. When a statue of the Virgin Mary weeps blood in a Chicago parish, you’re left wondering whether faith can make miracles happen. — In a poor Chicago parish in 1979, a statue of the Virgin Mary weeps blood every November, and the faithful, who credit the miracle to a woman who has died, want her made a saint. The Church sends a priest, Frank Shore, who no longer believes in miracles himself. He has closed a case like this once before, and the whole parish lost its faith.

With music by Zbigniew Preisner, her regular composer and Kieślowski’s, Agnieszka Holland briefly lets you believe in an idyllic summer of kids in the fields and endless holidays. Then nine-year-old Olivier vanishes on his way to his grandmother’s, and years later a boy turns up claiming to be him. — The family is spending the summer on a vet’s farm in the French countryside when nine-year-old Olivier sets off on his bike to take his grandmother her lunch, and never gets there. Over the next six years the family falls apart. Then, in Paris, a policeman picks up a teenager selling himself on the street, and the boy says his name is Olivier. — Nominated for Most Promising Actor (Grégoire Colin) | César Awards | 1993 Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 1992

Ukraine is starving, but the Soviet Union would rather the world heard about modernisation, and in Agnieszka Holland’s film Peter Sarsgaard plays Walter Duranty, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting. One journalist wants the truth about a man-made famine that killed several million people. — In 1933 the bankrupt Soviet Union is building an industrial miracle, and whenever anyone asks where the money is coming from, the answer is always the same: grain from Ukraine. Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist, wants to see it for himself. Western correspondents are barred from Ukraine, so he simply boards a train without a permit. — Golden Lions | Polish Film Festival | 2019 Best Production Design | Polish Film Festival | 2019 Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 2019