Korek Bojanowski

He introduces himself as a cinephile, screenwriter, director, producer, and film scholar. Korek Bojanowski graduated in directing from EICAR International Film & TV School in Paris. For years, he has been known to arthouse enthusiasts as a co-creator of Amondo, a cinema located in the heart of Warsaw. His debut film, “Loss of Balance,” was one of the most discussed films at the 49th Gdynia Film Festival (FPFF) and earned him numerous awards.

He is an alumnus of directing from the Parisian EICAR (École Internationale de Création Audiovisuelle et de Réalisation), an institution renowned for its practical and interdisciplinary approach to educating future filmmakers, and which counts among its alumni artists such as Olivier Assayas. In Poland, Bojanowski complemented his creative education with a prestigious screenplay course at the Wajda School.

He made his first film at the age of 23. The short film “Reservation” (2016) is a screwball comedy. Janek and Julka have plans to see a show. The girl waits for her boyfriend, who, late for the meeting, is riding his bike through the rain-soaked streets of Kraków. The theatrical bell rings for the third time, but Janek is still not there. Little does he know how unlucky that evening will turn out to be and how many hardships he will have to overcome to reach the audience. The film had its premiere at the Tehran International Film Festival.

In 2024, the audience at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia got to know Bojanowski, debuting with a full-length feature, as a bold and mature filmmaker. His “Loss of Balance,” hailed as one of the festival’s revelations, is a story about violence at art schools wrapped in the guise of a psychological thriller.

Bojanowski, who is also the author of the screenplay for “Loss of Balance”, when asked: “Where did this story come from?” replies: “From a different place than you might expect. Contrary to appearances, the theme of violence in education was not the first. It is striking today especially strongly because issues of abuse in acting and film schools have come to light. These institutions have been forced to change their mode of operation. But that came later. It all started with my desire to make a film about growing up, about losing dreams. I saw it among my friends, who finished their studies at age 23–25. I remembered them from high school times—they had a lot of ideas and plans. Everything seemed incredible and within reach. They went to study, which seemed like the first step toward realizing their dreams, even if not necessarily artistic. But it was quite the opposite. Everything was fading, fading… and in fact, nothing was left.”

“Loss of Balance” earned Bojanowski the award for Best Debut Director at the Gdynia Film Festival (FPFF), the Don Quixote Award, the Polish Federation of Disciplinary Film Clubs Award, and the Janusz “Kuba” Morgenstern Perspektiva Award for 2024, as well as the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Award in the Film category for 2024, and the Best Screenplay award at the Shanghai International Film Festival, where the film had its international premiere.

“Loss…” is a contemporary story set among final-year students of an acting department. The main character, Maja (Nel Kaczmarek), gives her all at auditions and in acting school classes. Unfortunately, her love for film and theater seems unrequited. Despite dedicating her entire young life to acting, she struggles with a lack of self-confidence and is considering switching to another field of study.

“Korek Bojanowski treats the themes presented in recent reports as a constant element of Polish acting schools, and builds his story around the last five weeks before Maja’s (Nel Kaczmarek) diploma performance and her classmates’ final efforts,” reads the Filmawka review. “The protagonist doesn’t believe in her future acting career. Too many failed auditions, too few contacts. In the evenings, she makes drinks and cleans various surfaces at a bar near the theater. She already plans to change her field of study. Her colleagues aren’t despairing. There’s a bit of support, and perhaps some relief that the competition is reduced.”

The situation changes with the arrival of Jacek (Tomasz Schuchardt), the new director of the final performance. Initially unrecognized by the students, he quickly proves to be a once-respected artist who withdrew from public life after the suicide of an actress in one of his productions. When the truth comes to light, the dean (Tamara Arciuch’s return to the cinema screens) de-escalates the tense situation, and Jacek confronts his past with the students. At the new director’s urging, the young actors change the way they are rehearsing to Macbeth, and a new audition is required.

This marks the beginning of a carefully designed masterclass in manipulation, which also stands as the strongest element of “Loss of Balance.” The screenplay, written by Bojanowski together with Katarzyna Priwieziencew, shines when it focuses on realistic methods of influence: fake sympathy, the pressure of the reciprocity rule, unexpected negative stimuli, driving emotional swings, and turning group members against each other. The gradual build-up of Maja’s relationship with Jacek is a credible process that, compared to Andrew and Fletcher’s war in “Whiplash,” may not dazzle with emotional intensity, but thanks to its measured approach, is closer to everyday life and generates more empathy—toward both sides of the conflict.

Tomasz Schuchardt is so convincingly brilliant in his role that I occasionally found myself unconsciously giving him an unsecured trust credit and questioning the intentions of the main character — writes a reviewer from Filmawka.

“Loss of Balance” begins with a very powerful quote that essentially sets the tone for the entire film: “I have to rape you so that life doesn’t rape you,” words that Tadeusz Łomnicki used to habituate his protégés, young acting students. Because, in the name of this greater and truly art (whatever that may really mean), it has long been customary to demand great sacrifices and desecrate the sovereignty of one’s own boundaries (both physical and mental). Bojanowski’s directing debut hits straight at the core of this legitimizing violence, the creative mythology that states: if it doesn’t hurt, then something is simply wrong — writes Diana Dąbrowska for Filmweb.

In Bojanowski’s film, there are no unnecessary things. With great respect for every detail, the director and his team put together a narrative marked by incredible credibility. From the brilliant casting of the student group, through the dialogues, to the various spaces (apartments, rehearsal rooms, theaters, cafes) where the characters painfully clash their interests.

Characters and situations do not emerge in a vacuum; everything in this psychologically tense puzzle serves a purpose. With “Loss of Balance,” we won’t only take away masterful confrontations between Maja and Jacek, but also other characters. In my opinion, special attention should also be paid to Anka (Angelika Smyrgała) and Kuba (Mikołaj Matczak). Each of them comes into this story with a certain baggage of experiences that our lecturer-manipulator won’t hesitate to exploit in his artistic crusade — praises Dąbrowska.

“Loss of Balance” is a film that last year took home three awards at the Gdynia Film Festival. Bojanowski’s debut production is making more and more noise in the Polish cinema scene, not only because of its subject matter. That’s why you cannot miss this May premiere — reviews Maria Orava from Radio Zet — When talking about his film in an interview with film critic Michał Oleszczyk, Bojanowski admitted that while working on the film, he researched many stories of Polish acting students who experienced violence in acting schools. He personally spoke with many of them, so his film is a collection of true events. It is a film you simply cannot overlook in the cinema.

“Loss of Balance is an incisive examination of Poland’s shameful history of violence within its artistic higher education institutions. Director Korek Bojanowski (recipient of the debut award at the Gdynia Festival), consciously refrains from constructing his narrative around a simplistic dichotomy of villainous instructors and virtuous students. Instead, the reality portrayed is markedly more nuanced — as Dawid Dróżdż observes in “Gazeta Wyborcza”: Loss of Balance is the Polish counterpart to the notorious Whiplash, where the artist is subjected to a brutal form of training. The film demonstrates how ambitions and societal expectations can nearly consume the victim from within, illustrating that the line between honing one’s craft and self-destructive overexertion is often perilously thin. Bojanowski vividly depicts the grueling reality of aspiring actors: hours of rehearsal, tuition, physical conditioning, and in the evenings, working at a bar simply to pay the rent — a routine familiar to countless students in acting schools.

The illusion of the profession’s elitism corrodes from within, igniting an unhealthy competitive atmosphere. In the quest for the leading role in their diploma production, every tactic, no matter how ethically questionable, becomes permissible. Consequently, Loss of Balance reveals that unethical conduct is not confined solely to the faculty but is also perpetuated by students themselves, who act treacherously toward one another.

Loss of Balance is a critically significant film, particularly for the creative community, yet it also offers outsiders a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that govern this environment. Korek Bojanowski emerges as a voice of the younger generation, voicing opposition to the crossing of moral and ethical boundaries. The revolution initiated several years ago has fundamentally one overarching goal: to ensure that no one else suffers sexual violence in the name of art — writes Dróżdż.

“In an interview, Bojanowski reflected on the cost of personal fulfillment,” the critic reports. “He said, ‘I’ve asked myself what price we must pay to realize ourselves. I believe few people pass through this stage of maturation unscathed. We all encounter some form of hardship; these are intense experiences. That’s precisely what I wanted to animate in my film.”

Currently, Bojanowski is working as a producer for the production company Amondo, having recently received a grant from the Polish Film Institute for a feature film directed by Łukasz Barczyk titled “Passenger“. The film will tell the story of a young man who, after the death of his father, decides to embark on a journey across Italy in search of his mother, who abandoned him when he was still a baby.

As a filmmaker, Korek Bojanowski is developing his next project, which on one hand aims to confront one of the greatest maladies of contemporary society—the pervasive belief that everyone is uniquely special—and on the other, will follow a coming-of-age narrative reminiscent of a director’s debut. However, unlike “Loss of Balance”, where the protagonist’s disillusionment stemmed from the outside world, in this new film, the failure will come from within; the main character—this time a man—will be disappointed in himself and his own potential. The film will be strongly urban in its setting, with Warsaw serving as one of the central characters in the story.