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festival prize

Maciej Drygas, one of the most outstanding Polish documentary filmmakers, was born in Łódź in 1956. He graduated from the famous WGIK Moscow film school with a degree in directing. Apart from being a documentary filmmaker, he is also a scriptwriter and radio director. His documentary art is a triumph in the search for truth with a veritable moral passion and profound sensitivity along with rare technical perfection. The film “Hear My Cry,” about Ryszard Siwiec’s self-immolation, has been awarded the Felix Prize. In “The State of Weightlessness,” Drygas paints the pieces of the Soviet shattered dream to conquer space, in “The Voice of Hope” he pays homage to the Radio Free Europe’s Polish Service, and in his most recent “A Day in the People’s Republic of Poland” he presents a grotesque and grim picture of everday life in the totalitarian state. In all of his films, Drygas is an emotional, albeit not effusive defender of the individual lost against the powers that threaten him, especially that of totalitarian rule.