Pawel Pawlikowski

Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski was born on Sept. 15, 1957 in Warsaw, Poland. In his mid teens, Pawlikowski moved from Poland to England to Germany and then back to England, where he settled permanently. He studied at Oxford University, and began working in film following his graduation. Pawlikowski's debut feature was the documentary "From Moscow to Pietushki: A Journey with Benedict Yerofeyev" (1990), chronicling the work of the eponymous Russian writer. A year later, the film "Dostoevsky's Travels" (1991) earned Pawlikowski a European Film Award for European Documentary of the Year. After two additional documentaries, "Serbian Epics" (1992) and "Tripping with Zhirinovsky" (1995), Pawlikowski made the transition to narrative filmmaking with the drama "The Stringer" (1998). Further efforts would earn Pawlikowski more and more notice; he won BAFTA Awards each for the romantic drama "Last Resort" (2000) and its follow-up "My Summer of Love" (2005), which starred British actors Emily Blunt and Paddy Considine. His next feature "The Woman in the Fifth" (2011), paired him with American star Ethan Hawke, though Pawlikowski truly breached international notability with "Ida" (2013), a Polish-language film about a young nun-in-training discovering her Jewish roots in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The film won Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards. Pawlikowski would go on to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Director for his next film, "Cold War" (2018), a romantic drama about an on-off relationship spanning decades.