Polish Talents Continue to Rise as Industry Eyes Overhaul to Incentive Scheme: ‘We Need a System Equal to the Needs of Poland’

With the search ongoing for a new director to lead the Polish Film Institute, following the departures last year of two institute heads in the span of just six months, Polish film professionals say their industry is at a crossroads.

First, the good news: Many of the industry’s heavyweights have hotly anticipated features lined up, including Academy Award winner Paweł Pawlikowski (“Ida”), who’s set to go into production on “Fatherland,” a biopic about German Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann, and three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland (“Green Border”), whose Franz Kafka biopic is reportedly eyeing a fall festival berth. 

Meanwhile, Oscar nominee Jan Komasa (“Corpus Christi”) is readying “Good Boy,” featuring “Adolescence” star Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough, while festival darling Agnieszka Smoczyńska (“The Silent Twins”) will return to the screen with the sci-fi thriller “Hot Spot. 

This year’s Cannes lineup includes a pair of Polish minority co-productions — Japanese filmmaker Kei Ishikawa’s “A Pale View of Hills,” bowing in Un Certain Regard, and Julia Kowalski’s “Que ma volonté soit faite,” selected for Directors’ Fortnight — highlighting an industry strength.

“Poland is very strong on co-productions. We have great talents to attach to projects,” notes Jan Naszewski, of Warsaw-based sales outfit New Europe Film Sales, who’s partnering with Ireland’s Stop Gap Films on “A Few Miles South,” the debut of U.K. director Ben Pearce that will be lensed by “Babadook” DoP Radek Ładczuk.

“We’re an attractive partner for European and Anglo-Saxon countries thanks to talent, the selective fund and tax rebate, as well as experienced and well-trained producers,” Naszewski adds.

That combination has led to critical plaudits and a string of Oscar nods for Polish co-productions including Jonathan Glazer’s “Zone of Interest,” Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain” and Magnus von Horn’s “The Girl With the Needle.”

Many fear, however, that the industry is becoming increasingly top-heavy, with Naszewski noting that “apart from a few established directors, Poland is not making theatrical films strong enough to travel internationally. Talents opt for making local commercial films, as well as series and films for streamers, because that funding is more secure.”

Part of that is a by-product of inflation, rising production costs and ongoing economic uncertainty worldwide, with fears of a global recession being turbo-charged by the saber-rattling administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. But Polish industry professionals also point to the industry’s structural weaknesses, and its reliance on a financing system that is struggling to keep up with the pace of production.

“What we are facing is a crisis of diversity of film financing sources within our country,” says Mariusz Włodarski of Lava Films, a co-producer on “A Pale View of Hills” and “The Girl With the Needle.” “We need to try to make this ecosystem a bit more sustainable.”

Poland’s 30% cash rebate has an annual budget of 108 million złoty (around $28.7 million) to support both domestic and international productions, with competition for the incentive so fierce this year that the servers crashed shortly after the online application platform opened. The total budget was allocated within hours.

“You can’t base your financing on the Polish cash rebate,” says Krzysztof Solek of Film Poland, who recently wrapped production on the limited series “Parallel Me” for Gaumont and Paramount+. Solek says he lost out on two big-budget U.S. productions this year because “the money is already gone,” adding, “We need a new system that is equal to the needs of Poland.”

This should have been a banner year for the Polish Film Institute, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, a period that has witnessed the remarkable growth of the Polish industry into one of Europe’s boldest and most dynamic.

Instead, the search to replace former director Karolina Rozwód — who stepped down last October, only six months after being appointed to replace longtime institute head Radosław Śmigulski — has left many anxiously waiting for resolution and hoping that the institute can once again bring a measure of stability to the industry. As one award-winning producer who asked to remain anonymous puts it, “For me to be able to make [high-quality] movies, I need to be able to use the PFI.”

To the institute’s credit, it’s appointed a committee of leading industry figures to help with the selection process, and Solek insists there is a “big political will” from both government and industry to overhaul the country’s beleaguered incentive scheme.

“We are working very closely, all the associations, guilds, together with government,” he says. “It feels like there will be a new system which will be much more attractive than our current one.”