Olga Chajdas

She had planned to become an astrophysicist, but instead of attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she enrolled at the Łódź Film School. She works as a director in both film and theatre and has an extensive body of work in television series. Her first feature film, Nina, won the VPRO Big Screen Award in Rotterdam. Olga Chajdas is interested in personal stories about people at turning points in their lives, moments of transgression often connected to the Jungian “midlife crisis,” always portrayed with great nuance, avoiding simplistic judgments and obvious resolutions.

“Nina is a universal story about love, identity, and hope. About the struggle for liberation and remaining true to oneself. Visually beautiful, with long and intimate takes and outstanding performances,” wrote the Rotterdam jury in its statement accompanying the award for Olga Chajdas.

Olga Chajdas’s debut feature is an intimate story of an infertile, married middle-aged teacher who discovers within herself a love for a younger woman. The film radiates emotional truth: scenes of people drifting apart, blossoming affection, disappointment, routine, sex, indifference, and turbulent emotions, all brought together by the trio of Julia Kijowska, Andrzej Konopka, and Eliza Rycembel, convince through their authenticity. As the jury noted, it is a universal film that successfully escapes being labeled solely as LGBT cinema. Asked how she managed to create such a convincing portrait of highly complex relationships, the director answers without hesitation: “I simply like people.”

She was born in Poznań and moved to Warsaw with her parents at the age of eight. While still in high school, she developed a strong passion for astrophysics and planned to study the subject in the United States. Unfortunately—or perhaps, from the perspective of Polish cinema, fortunately—she did not receive the scholarship that would have enabled her to go abroad. When it became clear that studying in the U.S. would not be possible, she decided to pursue her other high-school passion: cinema. By then it was too late to apply for full-time studies, so she enrolled in the part-time Film and Television Production Organization program at the Łódź Film School. At the same time, she chose to study directing at the private Academy of Film and Television in Warsaw.

“I think Łódź is actually a very good school, but I learned the craft mainly on film sets anyway,” says Olga Chajdas. “I value my production studies because I consider it a certain abuse to call oneself a director immediately after graduating from film school. In my opinion, that is not the right path. In the past, students were admitted to Łódź only after completing other studies and gaining life experience. That made sense. I came to the school from a completely different world; no one in my family or immediate circle was involved in filmmaking,” she adds. “Thanks to the school, I was able to learn about every stage of the filmmaking process. Then again, perhaps I was simply lucky to be part of an interesting year group in production studies—among my fellow students was, for example, Tomek Wasilewski.”

Olga Chajdas’s award-winning debut feature, Nina, which was recognized in Rotterdam, is a universal story about love, identity, and hope. It is a story about the struggle for liberation and remaining true to oneself.

As she herself admits, graduating with a master’s degree was an absolute and non-negotiable requirement imposed by her mother, an art historian. Despite studying at two institutions simultaneously, she began working on film and television sets while still a student. First as an assistant production manager, then as a second production manager, later as an assistant director and second unit director. She went through the entire organizational side of filmmaking before moving into the creative department, gaining an inside understanding of every stage of the filmmaking process.

“Every director should go through production, because knowing who to talk to, what things cost, and how much work, effort, and money they require is crucial. I was always very lucky with people. When I started my studies, I found work on film sets very quickly. As an assistant production manager, I joined a project by Jarek Żamojda. There I met Mariusz Mielczarek, who was just preparing a television series and invited me to work with him. That, in turn, led me to Maciek Kowalewski—screenwriter, actor, director, and a great friend of mine.”

Meeting Maciej Kowalewski was Olga Chajdas’s first step toward theatre directing. After seeing his acclaimed production Miss HIV, she offered to work as his assistant. They collaborated on the play Bomba. At Warsaw’s Teatr Na Woli, where Kowalewski served as artistic director, she made her debut as an independent theatre director with The Last Jew in Europe, based on a play by Tuvia Tenenbom.

“Tenenbom’s brilliantly written play, which constantly overturns our assumptions about its characters and their behaviour by juggling stereotypes, raises important questions about respect for difference, the need for tolerance, and the limits of human dignity. It is an outstanding drama about concealing the truth, escalating deception, mutual accusations, and personal catharsis. By producing The Last Jew in Europe, Teatr Na Woli joined the public discussion on antisemitism and xenophobia in connection with the 40th anniversary of March 1968,” critics wrote after the premiere.

While working with Kowalewski, Olga Chajdas met Magdalena Łazarkiewicz, who, together with Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik, was preparing Ekipa, the first Polish political-fiction television series.

“I started on Ekipa as an assistant director and learned a tremendous amount from Agnieszka Holland. That collaboration continued for many years, all the way through In Darkness, where I worked as a second unit director.”

Olga Chajdas recalls that production as a true school of directing.

“It was an enormous amount of work. That was when I told myself I could no longer be a second unit director because it demanded too much of me. The collaboration was incredibly rewarding, and I learned a great deal, especially about making decisions quickly, drawing on experience, and maintaining composure in all circumstances.”

She eventually became an independent director. She worked on television series ranging from ambitious, critically acclaimed productions featuring leading actors to daily soap operas. She describes television drama as a school of craftsmanship and tries to learn something new from every project.

“I believe it was a very important period in my development—both the good series and the bad ones. For several months I worked on Ukryta prawda (Hidden Truth), and I’m not ashamed of that. It was an excellent learning experience. The format required every scene to be staged in a single take. The material had to look like a documentary, highly credible and realistic. It was a very interesting exercise for me, and I still feel that scenes like that are one of my strengths.

There was also Barwy szczęścia (Colours of Happiness), where I had to shoot more than a dozen scenes in a single day. There was absolutely no room for mistakes—everything had to be prepared perfectly. Fortunately, I never had a problem with that; perhaps it’s my Poznań blood,” she laughs.

“Later, and something I value greatly, I had the opportunity to work on better series such as Deep Water and Entangled. I am currently working on For Dreams and have several new and exciting television projects ahead of me. The world of television drama has changed enormously and, in terms of professionalism and scale, has come much closer to cinema.”

At the same time, she completed her first documentary film. On a Mysterious Matter tells the story of Professor Andrzej Sobolewski, a scientist researching phenomena occurring in hydrogen bonds. The film was both a tribute to her earlier scientific interests and a playful attempt to portray the colourful world of modern science in black and white. Although she remembers the project fondly, it confirmed for her that documentary filmmaking was not her path. She preferred creating rather than recording reality.

In 2011, she began work on the screenplay for Nina, which she envisioned as her feature-length debut. She developed the project within Studio Prób at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing, where a short exercise film consisting of two scenes with actors was produced as part of the development process.

“For a very long time I resisted making short films. I felt that I already had a finished script for Nina, that I would soon be making a feature film, and that there was no point in working on shorter forms. But that feeling—that I was just about to make my feature debut—dragged on for several years…

Meanwhile, one of the cinematographers from the television series Barwy szczęścia, Jacek Szatański, was finishing film school and asked me to direct his cinematography graduation project. I agreed. The film was called 3 x LOVE. Jacek showed me the script he had: three scenes that were seemingly identical, but with a different ending each time. I thought it would be more interesting if it were the same couple and the same scene. The couple says almost exactly the same lines, but at different moments in their relationship. An important conversation means one thing when you have been together for only a few months, something entirely different when you have been together for several years, and something else again long after you have stopped speaking honestly to one another. It was an interesting exercise.

The film was selected for festivals and opened various doors for me. That was when I realized that short films are worth making too,” she says with a laugh.

“I have always been fascinated by characters who cross over to the other side in unexpected ways. I deliberately chose not to show the moment of the murder itself, focusing instead on what happens to the protagonist the day after. That moment seemed far more interesting to me than the act of violence itself,” she says about her short film A Woman Wakes Up in the Morning.

Chajdas continued in that direction. While waiting to make her feature debut, she directed the 15-minute fiction film A Woman Wakes Up in the Morning. It is an intriguing story about a woman who, for no apparent reason, murders her husband and young daughter, only to surrender herself voluntarily to the police. Chajdas employs a particularly interesting dramatic device: the film begins on the morning after the murders. What happened earlier is revealed through brief flashbacks, while the most crucial moments remain off-screen, with scenes cut just before their climax.

These two short films clearly demonstrate the scope of the director’s artistic interests: personal stories of people at decisive turning points in their lives, moments of transgression often linked to the Jungian “midlife crisis,” portrayed with great nuance and complexity, avoiding simple judgments and obvious solutions while searching for deeper—and sometimes even deeper still—layers of meaning.

“I have always been fascinated by characters who cross over to the other side in unexpected ways. I deliberately chose not to show the moment of the murder itself, focusing instead on what happens to the protagonist the day after. That moment seemed far more interesting to me than the act of violence itself. I also deliberately do not want to reveal the motive. It always sounds trivial: the husband was bad, the child was crying. But such a drastic step is always driven by something elusive, something impossible to pinpoint. What is also important to me is that the people closest to the person never see it coming, never sense it. That is true in A Woman Wakes Up in the Morning, and it is also true in Nina.”

An important element of Olga Chajdas’s films is the space in which the action unfolds. Alongside the relationships between the characters, it helps construct the world of the story. Space itself becomes a storyteller, pushing the narrative forward. One can see in this her long-standing passion for artistic photography, from which she continues to draw inspiration and visual references for her films.

She often emphasizes that she is not an intellectual type; she works more through instinct and emotion. While developing her feature debut, she consistently drew upon her theatrical experience. Because she values the process of working with actors and developing ideas together, she places great importance on script work. In the case of Nina, she invited the film’s lead actress, Julia Kijowska, to help shape the final version of the screenplay. Screenwriter Marta Konarzewska also participated in the writing process.

“I am aware that directing and screenwriting are two different professions, but I enjoy being involved in the writing process. I want these stories to be mine—I want to know them inside out, to understand where they are heading and how they should develop. I greatly value my collaboration with Marta Konarzewska, as well as the process that Julia and I went through together.

But after Nina, I want to take a break from writing.”

Alongside several directing projects still in the early stages of development, Chajdas has ambitious production plans. Through her company, Wild Mouse Production, she wants to support filmmakers creating artistic cinema. She envisions the role of a producer as that of a creative partner—someone who supports the artistic process, provides inspiration, and opens doors.

Wild Mouse Production is currently developing the feature film Winter Under the Sign of the Crow, based on Olga Tokarczuk’s short story Professor Andrews in Warsaw. The film follows a British scientist during the night martial law is declared in Poland—a man whom everyone, in the face of the country’s political catastrophe, has forgotten.