Borys Lankosz (born 31 March 1973, Kraków) is a Polish film director.
He graduated from the National Film School in Łódź. His debut film "Evolution" (2001) received several awards, i.a. the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. He is the creator of the documentary series From a Different Angle, filmed in Iran, China and Zimbabwe, and the films Kurc and Poles Poles (with Wislawa Szymborska, Stanislaw Lem, Krzysztof Penderecki).
His feature debut titled Rewers (Reverse) won first prize, the Golden Lion, at the Polish Film Festival in 2009 in Gdynia. Lankosz is also a director and screenwriter of several documentary and short films: Radegast (documentary film), Alien VI (short).
His thriller “A Grain of Truth”, where the phantoms of medieval antisemitism seem to reappear in a contemporary small Polish town, was a box office hit of 2015.
Education
Lankosz is a graduate of the National Film School in Łódź, which counts directors such as Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieślowski among its graduates, where he studied under Polish film director Wojciech Has.
Career
Documentaries
Lankosz's diploma film, a 2001 documentary entitled Evolution, won the 45th San Francisco International Film Festival as well as many other international and Polish film festivals. The jury in San Francisco decided to award the film "because of its remarkable mood, tone and beauty." According to the jury, Evolution's "every shot, cut, sound effect conspires to involve the audience in its tense, astonishing and provocative world. [...] Its grip is unrelenting, and lasts long after its beautiful final moments."
This film marked a clear direction in Lankosz's creative work which would follow. The central themes of this work revolve around notions of otherness and the attempt to come to terms with it through the medium of film.
The success of his first film Evolution, opened many doors at the outset of the young director's career. In proceeding years, with the Polish Television as the producer, Lankosz made many documentary films which won the acclaim of audiences, critics, and awards at prestigious international film festivals. Among the most notable of which are: Poles Poles, a documentary about some of the most eminent Polish figures (such as Nobel prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska, as well as the legendary science fiction writer and author of Solaris, Stanisław Lem, among others) and Radegast, a harrowing documentary tale about Western European Jews, who in 1941 were sent to the Łódź ghetto, which received the Silver Phoenix Award at the International Film Festival Jewish Motifs in Warsaw, the Finalist Award Winner of The New York Festivals, as well as being awarded a Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense Medal.
Borys Lankosz is also the author of a film series entitled From the Different Angle, filmed in China, Zimbabwe, Iran and France. This four-part series was broadcast in prime time by the first channel of the public Polish Television (TVP).
Feature films
In 2009, Lankosz directed his first feature film Reverse, which became a staggering success and marked a new direction in his work. The film was produced by legendary film studio Kadr, responsible for the creation of the most important, now classic films of the so-called Polish Film School of the 1950s and 1960s. Reverse, the studio's first production in over fourteen years, turned out to be a smashing success. Already at its premiere at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, Reverse was heralded as the forerunner of a "New Wave" of Polish cinema, and Lankosz himself was appointed its patron.
Moreover, Reverse won the acclamation of the jury, winning 11 of the festival's awards, including the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Best Film. Other notable awards included: the Audience Award and the selection of the film as the Poland's official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign language film Oscar.
Borys Lankosz became the center of massive media attention, whose goal was to turn him into a celebrity, an attempt which he effectively evaded. He did however joyously accept two distinguished awards: one from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage who bestowed upon him the Artist of the Year Award; as well as the prestigious Paszport Polityki, an award granted by the magazine Polityka for an artistic event which was the "best debut of at least a decade."