Polish film director Zanussi turns 80

The National Film Festival last month announced Zanussi as the recipient of the 2019 Platinum Lions Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be handed to the director on September 21.

Before graduating in film directing from the famous Łódź Film School in central Poland, Zanussi studied physics and philosophy. All his films probe moral and philosophical issues, including the relationship between science and faith.

His most acclaimed films are ‘Family Life’, ‘Camouflage’, ‘Spiral’, ‘Illumination’, ‘Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease’, ‘The Constant Factor, ‘Persona non grata’, and ‘At Full Gallop’.

Zanussi has numerous prestigious prizes and awards to his credit, including the top accolade at the Locarno Festival (for ‘Illumination’) and awards from the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Festival (for ‘Spiral’ and ‘The Constant Factor’).

His latest feature, ‘Ether’, refers directly to the myth of Faust and is a story about a military medical doctor experimenting at the start of the 20th century with science in order to get power over other people.

Zanussi served four terms as a consultant of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, which was established by Pope John Paul II in 1982. His 1981 feature ‘From a Far Country’ focused on the life of Karol Wojtyła, the Polish-born future pope, in the context of Poland’s turbulent history.

Zanussi’s literary output comprises a book of memoirs entitled ‘The Time to Die’. He has also pursued a teaching career, lecturing in Poland and abroad, including at the National Film School in London and Columbia University in New York.

(mk/pk)